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THE TRUE LAFAYETTE 



THE *'TRUE" BIOGRAPHIES 
AND HISTORIES 



THE TRUE ULYSSES S. GRANT 

BY GENERAL CHARLES KING 

THE TRUE WILLIAM PENN 

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON 

BY PAUL LEICESTER FORD 

THE TRUE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

THE TRUE THOMAS JEFFERSON- 

BY WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS 

THE TRUE ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

BY WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS 

THE TRUE HENRY CLAY 

BY JOSEPH M. ROGERS 

THE TRUE ANDREW JACKSON 

BY CYRUS T. BRADY 

THE TRUE PATRICK HENRY 

BY GEORGE MORGAN 

THE TRUE DANIEL WEBSTER 

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION 

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER 

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR 

BY GUY CARLETON LEE, PH.D. 

With _ 24 full-page illustrations — T)ortraits, 
appropriate views and facsimiles — in each volume. 
Crown 8vo. Per volume; Cloth., $2.50, net; ha.\t 
levant, ?5.oo, net. Postage extra. 




LA FAYETTE AS HE APPEARED AT YORKTOWN 
From a drawing by Alonzo Chappel 



The True La Fayette 



By 
George Morgan 

Author of "The True Patrick Henry" 
"John'Littlejohn of J," "The Issue," etc. 



WITH TWENTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1919 






copvBioHT. iQig, nr J. b. lipfincott company 



OEC 31 1919 



PRI»«TED BT i. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANT 
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE 
PHILADELPHIA, D. 8. A. 



(DCi.A5Gi209 



5t 



TO 

DELAWARE COLLEGE 

IN 
MY MUCH-LOVED NATIVE STATE OF DELAWARE 



PREFACE 

At the very crest and crisis of the World War, 
La Fayette's name was spoken by an authoritative 
voice in the most dramatic, the most magical manner 
that could well be imagined.. Immediately, the inci- 
dent was taken to heart by our millions. It became 
popular because it had in it the right ring, the true 
appeal. The moment was ripe for it — the American 
mind receptive. Most people had faith in the Allies, 
in the ultimate confounding and overthrow of the 
enemy; but the pessimist in us often darkened our 
hope with the whisper : " Nay, be not too sanguine ! 
They may drive through to Paris, to the sea." There 
might be a reversion to military despotism — that seemed 
a haunting and horrible possibility ; or, as all America 
hoped, there might be a complete reestablishment of 
free government, such as La Fayette had fought for 
from boyhood on till his last breath. 

One may be pardoned for recalling the exact cir- 
cumstances of the incident referred to. The situation 
was simple. All clouds, all complexities (if not all 
doubts) had been swept away when the United States 
resolved to strike for the liberties of mankind. The 
enemy, by reason of enormous successes in the East, 
was concentrating in the West. His submarines were 
in the full fiendishness of their activity. Then it was 
that General John J. Pershing, Commander-in-chief of 
the American Expeditionary Forces, having arrived in 
France with the vanguard of our overseas army of 
two millions of men, made a pilgrimage in Paris to 
Picpus Cemetery and, standing by one of the tombs, 
said reverently: ''La Fayette, we are here!' That 

7 



PREFACE 

utterance — those four words ^ — meant much to us and 
a great deal to the hard-pressed French. One meaning 
was that we were about to pay something on our in- 
extinguishable debt to France. Another meaning was 
that America, with its three millions in young La Fay- 
ette's time, had enlisted, with its one hundred milUons, 
in the very cause La Fayette had championed. 

Thus once more in the world's history La Fayette's 
name became a word to conjure with. From begin- 
ning to end, his was a life of action. With his one 
great creed — Liberty — he was the Man of Two Worlds 
(Beranger's 'Whomme des deux mondes"), two ages, 
two civilizations — that of Vancieri regime and the lat- 
ter-day democracy. One cannot add : " The Man of 
Two Centuries," since he labored in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth and now, in the twentieth — dust though he 
be — is still enlisted in the cause of freedom. Nor may 
one say, *' the Man of Two Revolutions," seeing that 
he was a chief participant in two major revolutions 
and the deciding force in not a few minor revolutions. 

Manifestly, a review of La Fayette's life and labors 
is in order. Approaching the centenary of his death, we 
still need to know more of the man who said : *' The 
welfare of America is closely bound up with the 
welfare of mankind." 

* Various versions of the saying soon were heard. , At 
a Victory dinner, with distinguished speakers, one said: 
" La Fayette, we have come." Another : " La Fayette, here we 
are" — a ridiculous paraphrase. A letter from the writer of 
these pages to Headquarters brought forth the following 
statement: American Expeditionary Forces, 

Office of the Commander-in-Chief. 
Dear Sir: France, January 4, 1919. 

General Pershing has received your letter of December 9, 
and directs me to advise you that the words spoken by him at 
the tomb of La Fayette were : " La Fayette, we are here." 
Sincerely yours. 

G. E. Adam SON, 
Captain, A. D. G., 

Private Secretary. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. At ClIAVANlAC — A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE I3 

II. College, Court, Camp 32 

III. For Human Rights — The American Revolution. . 50 

IV. Campaigning in America 81 

V. Before the Outbreak 216 

VI. La Fayette in the French Revolution 247 

VII. His Crisis and His Critics. . ♦ 310 

VIII. Five Years in Dungeon Depths 353 

IX. In Napoleon's Time 391 

X. The Great Tour — 5000 Miles in America 421 

XI. His Last Revolution (1830) 437 

XII. At La Grange — Last Days 452 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



La Fayette as He Appeared at Yorktown . .. .Frontispiece 

Chavaniac, La Fayette's Birthplace 26 

Marquise de La Fayette 40 

La Fayette Wounded in the Battle of Brandywine 11 1 

Memorial Shaft at the Spot Where La Fayette was 

Wounded During the Battle of Brandywine 112 

Sword Presented to La Fayette by Congress 116 

Louis XVI, King of France : 254 

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France 280 

'* Guarde National et Federe " 290 

Madame Elizabeth, Sister of Louis XVI 304: 

Princesse de Lamballe 334 - 

" Les Furies de Guillotine " 340 

" L'Incroyable et La Merveilleuse " 342 

Corporal Colomba, La Fayette's Jailer at Olmutz Prison.. 386 

Gouverneur Morris 394 

LaGrange 

Main Entrance to the Chateau 396 

View of the Chateau from the Lawn 396 

La Fayette, Portrait by Thomas Sully 420 

La Fayette's Arrival at New York, 1824 424 

La Fayette's Reception at Independence Hall, September 28, 

1824 428 

The Reception to La Fayette at Cliveden, Germantown, on 

His Return to America in 1824 430 

Vase Presented to La Fayette by the National Guards of 

France 442- 

The King of the French (1830-1848) and the Man who 

Made Him Such 

Louis Philippe I 448 

General La Fayette in 1830 448 

La Fayette, Portrait by S. F. B. Morse 452 

Tombs of La Fayette and His Wife in Picpus Cemetery, 

Paris 476 ' 



The True La Fayette 

I 

CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

La Fayette is made alive for us, at the start, by 
his own story of the wolf he yearned to meet and do 
to death in the woods at Chavaniac, in Haute-Loire, 
w^here he was born on the sixth of September, 1757, 
and where, next day, in the church by the chateau, he 
was christened Marie Paul Roche Yves Gilbert du 
Motier. This posthumous child, this lordling with 
names strung upon him like beads upon a rosary, this 
lad who, at eight, as champion of his mother's flocks, 
bristled against a depredating wolf, was destined, we 
now know, to meet many terrible wolves, to go out 
into the big world as a hunter of wolves; and such 
wolves ! — wolves of thousand-year-old privilege, of des- 
potism, of anarchy. 

Remembering these things, La Fayette is no longer 
a name merely, a figure stalking, ghost-like, from date 
to date in history; he gains in human warmth; his 
strong pulsations grow recognizable under the reader's 
touch ; he becomes for us a being with breath in him, 
boy, impetuous youth, man, patriot, a wrestler who 
threw and was thrown. 

In those Bourbon days, the game laws of France 
protected ravaging wild animals in order that the nobles 
might disport themselves through woods and fields ; by 
and by, indeed, we shall see how the droit de Chasse 
figured among the causes of the French Revolution. 

Nor does one need to recall La Fontaine's fables to 
realize that wolves abounded. A traveller, telling of 
the depredations of loiip-cerviers and animadverting 
upon the legendaiy loup-garou, writes of a midnight 

13 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

raid of wolves passing like a whirlwind tnrough the 
main street of the village.^ 

Wolves ! Caesar ! Vercingetorix ! These must have 
been in the boy's thoughts as he followed the hunter's 
paths in the dark forest of Chavaniac. His own line- 
age reached much less than half way back to Caesar's 
age ; but the wolf's, one fancies, went surely and darkly 
all the way back to it, and beyond. As La Fayette, the 
young learner, thumbed his copy of " De Bello Gal- 
lico," and especially as he pondered over its Seventh 
Book, he must have felt himself on Caesar's own par- 
ticular ground. Certainly Julius Caesar was well 
acquainted with Auvergne, the country of the Arverni. 
Hereaway campaigned against him Vercingetorix, the 
Arvernian rebel, " chief of a hundred chiefs." Here- 
away it was that, with battle-axe men, men with clubs 
and trained war-dogs, he made Caesar taste bitter 
defeat, successfully defending Gerovina, his capital, 
on its hill within sight of what was later Augusto- 
Nemetum, home of the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, and 
what is now big and busy Clermont-Ferrand. Here it 
was that he made the last stand for the liberties of Gaul ; 
and, finally, at Alesia,^ in glittering armor with cloak 
and tunic, moustached, bearded, his long hair showing 
below the neck-flap of his two-winged helmet, the hero 
rode into camp a broken captive, destined to walk at 
Caesar's chariot wheel ; and so die the death. 

As Brieude puts it, La Haute- Auvergne is, prop- 
erly speaking, " a cordon of mountains which, joining 
the Velay and Vivarais, form a prolongation of the 
Savoyard Alps." In a sense, Auvergne is a segment 
of the backbone of France. Victor Duruy lauds it as 

* " A Pilgrimage to Auvergne," by Louisa Stuart Cos- 
tello, 2 vols., 1842. 

' Or, as some claim, at Alise le Reine, in Auvergne, 47 B.C. 
Others insist that Alaise, in France — Comte was the place of 
surrender. 

14 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

a unifying part of Nature's great framework of the 
country between the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, and 
the two sah seas.^ Auvergne, with its high mountains — 
Puy de Sancy, 1897 metres — its three hundred extinct 
volcanoes, " has, like the Alps, its shepherds and its 
goatherds." M. Duruy sees in Auvergne a binding 
force that has held France together, *' for if the East 
had only mountaineers and the West only sailors, two 
nations would have been formed in France." * Let us 
add that, from these midland heights of ancient Aqui- 
tania Prima, streams flow in every direction. It is the 
central watershed of France. Such, for instance, is 
La Fayette's own stream, the AUier, powerful affluent 
and, considered by some/ great fountain-feeder of the 
Loire, the longest river — '" le fleuve national " — of a 
well-watered land. Peaks pierce the clouds in this 
La Fayette country ; and Chateaubriand, visiting it, 
found breathing difficult on one of them. The land 
varies, like the people. It is a lesser Switzerland, with 
much grandeur, much beauty, much charm of con- 
trast, such as is aflforded by the Puy de Dome, an 
immense purple-shadowed mountain, and La Lamagne, 
a far-reaching valley, fertile and beautiful, green and 
gracious. At once there is that which is soft and fair 
and winsome, and that which is hard, wild, black, 

' By parity of reasoning, the Appalachies and Rockies in 
America become advantageous; they help to diversify; and, in 
the diversification, as in union, there is strength. 

* "Histoire de France." Here is the passage in full : " Yet 
the great valleys of the Rhine and the Rhone traverse the moun- 
tainous regions of the East, while the' last spurs of the moun- 
tains extend far into the West ; so that Auvergne, in the centre 
of France, has, like the Alps, its shepherds and its goatherds, 
while the valleys of the Rhone and the Rhine have, like those 
of the great western rivers, their trading or manufacturing 
towns. This parallelism is the foundation of the National 
Unity of France : for if the East had only mountaineers and the 
West only sailors, two nations would have been formed in 
France." 

®"The Loire," by Douglas Goldring, 1913. 

15 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

barren and forbidding. The crag, the precipice, the 
perilous pass, the castle-crowned hill, the arched bridge, 
the untutored mountaineer, the ravaging baron, the 
robber chief, the ugly legendary tale of death, the pretty 
tale of love and fairyland luck — all these* come into the 
story of Auvergne. But the characteristic note, per- 
haps, is found in the volcanic origin of the numberless 
upheaved heights. It is the note of black — black dust, 
black rock, the white of snow on lava, black and 
brown barrens, with an occasional gray patch betoken- 
ing ashes and scoriae from some fiery vent. Boiling 
springs are found. Whole towns are built of dark 
stone of volvic, turned darker still by time. When 
La Fayette was a boy it was a custom on St. John's 
Eve to start great fires in the crater of the Puy de 
Dome. Thus would he behold an ** eruption " of a 
local Vesuvius. Most likely he knew of the fossil 
monsters dug up at Issoire, a few miles from his home, 
whereby it was suspected that frosty Auvergne must 
have been tropical and fiery in the days when its vol- 
canoes were active. What a land for a lad with a predi- 
lection for science ! But science was not his bent — 
not at all. He saw forests of pine, larch, beech, aspen, 
fir. A mountain echo to him was filetta miida — Fickle 
Maiden. Perhaps, at that time, there was a soft south- 
ern cadence in his speech which might have served 
him well when he went to Court. In Haute-Auvergne 
the ancient patois, like the Provengal of Roumanille 
and Mistral, is a Latin-descended dialect of the lan- 
guage d'oc. But one should add that the traveller fails 
to find in Auvergne this charm of speech that is dis- 
coverable in Mistral's land.*^ The Auvergne patois, 

''Of Joseph Roumanille (1818-1891), writes Charles Alfred 
Downer, is told the touching story, that one day. while reciting- in 
his home before a company of friends some poems in French 
that he had written, he observed tears in his mother's eyes. She 
could not understand the poetry his friends so much admired. 
Roumanille, much moved, resolved to write no verses that his 

l6 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

often soft and sweet when spoken by women and chil- 
dren, loses its fascinating quality when bellowed or 
grunted by the grufif mountaineers, accustomed to call- 
ing from hilltop to hilltop. The Auvergne's dance, too, 
is in keeping with the shrillness of the cornemeuse, his 
barbaric bagpipe. By the spring freshets he sends 
down wool and wood and marble. He is lumberman, 
raftsman, and out-of-doors man ; and his gancherie is 
known as far as Paris. 

But there are individual Auvergnats far better 
known to Paris and the world — historic personages, 
indeed. At Clermont-Ferrand, Urban II, in 1095, gave 
body and being to the First Crusade; French Kings 
favored the place in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies; and Pascal'' (1623-1662) was born there. 
Natives, too, were Delille, the poet, and General Des- 
saix; and the great Massillon, though born elsewhere, 
was so much esteemed that when he passed along the 
streets the people were wont to kneel, crying "^ Vive 
notre pere!" Nearer than Clermont-Ferrand to La 
F'ayette's old home — only six miles away, in fact — 
stood, and stands, the considerable town of Brioude. 
Froissart, in his " Chronicles," tells us how Sir Seguin 
de Batefol (Simon Batefol) " took by escalade a good 
city in Auvergne called Brioude, and which is situated 
on the river Allien" Then Sir Seguin preyed upon 
Auvergne until the King of Navarre got rid of him 
" by giving him poisoned oranges at dinner." There is 

mother could not enjoy, and henceforth devoted himself ar- 
dently to the task of purifying and perfecting the dialect of 
the Saint-Remy. It has been said no less truthfully than poeti- 
cally that from a mother's tears was born the new Provengal 
poetry, destined to so splendid a career. 

^ Of Pascal, in truth, the Clermontoises are particularly 
proud. And other celebrities are identified with Auvergne — 
Geoffrey of Tours; Domat, the jurisconsult, who insisted that 
law shall proceed from common sense, not from custom, and 
shall draw its precepts from an eternal code ; Michel de I'Hopi- 
tal. Chancellor under Catherine de Medici, who upheld tolera- 
tion; d'Estaing and Abbe Girard. 

2 17 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

really no end to the romance of this region, with its 
Roman prelude, its feudal story and its chapters 
belonging to the annals of France herself. 

However, let us make no overuse of local or his- 
torical color. It is La Fayette we are concerned about 
— his people, his environment, the character-forming 
influences of his early days. We want to know the 
world he opened his eyes upon — the eyes of his mind. 
Perhaps Americans will draw nearer to him in spirit 
when they begin to see as he saw ; they will find him all 
the more life-like when they visualize Auvergne and 
its lordling who was to do things of consequence, or at 
least try hard to do them, whether or no. 

But many of us can gain a topographical grasp 
only from the high road. We have the habit ; it is invet- 
erate. Even a view of the domes and puys and intricate 
convolutions of the '* massif Central " taken from the 
commanding cockpit of an aeroplane would do us lit- 
tle good. Hence it will be well to follow the old dili- 
gence road from Clermont-Ferrand. Like the railroad, 
it ascends where the Allier descends. The current 
comes north ; we are speeding south. We are in the 
lovely valley of La Limagne. It is an undulating road ; 
walnut trees shade it and between their branches are 
glimpses of blue horizons, purple mountains and much 
that is grand, since some of the peaks stand up 6000 
feet. If fogs thicken and veil the view, it may be that 
at some 'vantage point we shall have a Jovian scene- 
shifter in the wind, which, lifting the curtain, will dis- 
close a panorama not to be forgotten. 

We are in a mining country — that is clear. There 
are mines of lead, iron, antimony. The miner is the 
black-browned Auvergnat ; and we see him on the 
road. Likewise, we shall see his spouse in her cowl- 
like cap, black velvet bodice and scarlet sash. " Un 
gros rouge is the delight of the dames of Auvergne," 

18 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

says Lady Morgan, *' and un bleu celeste the passion of 
the elegantes of Lhnousin." 

Thus we come to the ancient town of Issoire, 
famous for the copper kettles made there ; to Brioude ; 
to the crossing of the AUier by a stone bridge, long 
celebrated for the width of its single arch ; and to St. 
Georges d'Aurat, with the Chateau de Saint Roch de 
Chavaniac nearby. We are at La Fayette's birthplace. 
To keep along the main road would be to ascend hour 
by hour until we should come to the crest of the water- 
shed. At the crest we should be some 3000 feet above 
the sea. On the one hand would be the basin of the 
AUier ; on the other the basin of the Loire. We should 
be about to pass from La Fayette's country into that 
of his kinsmen, the Polignacs, with is ruined Polignac 
castle on the very peak of a great rock, and its city of 
Le Puy, unrivaled in picturesqueness, built as it also 
is on steep basaltic rocks pointing towards heaven. In 
the South extend the Cevennes, whither the Huguenots 
fled during the religious strife of a past age. 

So much for our La Fayette high road southward 
from Clermont-Ferrand to Le Puy en Velay. We could 
have taken another southward road that would have 
led us nearer to the mediaeval La Fayette land of 
Forez, more to the east, past Thiers on its mountain- 
top, up the valley of cascades and so on over great 
heights from which the Dore and Dolore pour down 
their sparkling waters. Romance and legend are 
everywhere in this beautiful upland. From the moun- 
tain tops on a sunny day the eye ranges far and wide 
over central and southern France. To the east is 
the Rhone country, to the west the Garonne. Your 
guide tells you that with a good glass you could see 
Paris from the highest peak; but Paris is no leagues to 
the north, and you feel that it must be a very good 
day and a very good glass. He tells you also to beware 

19 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the Laveuse de Nuit. This goddess of the laundry 
washes with magic bluestone by moonlight; and the 
water she wrings out from the clothes turns to pearls. 
Seize the pearls, but avoid the goddess ; for if she 
catches you she will fling you headlong down some 
cataract. There was a castle in almost every crater, 
on almost every fort-like eminence; and here La Fay- 
ette's antecedents held sway prior to the transfer of 
the head of the house over the ridge to the banks of 
the Allien 

All around appear reminders of the period when 
cardinals rather than Kings or Commune ruled in 
France. Such is the neighboring La Chaise Dieu — 
town and church — where St. Robert, a canon of Bri- 
oude, established the Abbey of Benedictines, the shrine 
from which Raymond, Count of Toulouse, celebrated 
by Tasso, departed for the Holy Land. This Casa Dei 
was the richest convent in Auvergne. Pope Clement 
was born at Chaise Dieu and Pope Gregory XI was 
entombed therein. Cardinal Richelieu owned it; so 
did Cardinal Mazarin ; so did Cardinal de Rohan, who 
tried to give Marie Antoinette a diamond necklace and 
who was banished hither for his pains. Such a shrine 
by reason of its nearness and great celebrity must have 
been visited often by La Fayette's forbears, the occu- 
pants of the Castles of Saint-Romain, Vissac and Saint 
Roch de Chavaniac. In the Archives of France one 
finds ^ a copy of the Chavaniac parish register con- 
taining the baptismal record of " the very noble and 
very powerful gentleman," the self-same La Fayette 
of whom we are telling, the " lawful son of the very 
noble and very powerful gentleman, Monseigneur 
Michel - L©uis - Christophle -Roch - Gilbert DuMotier, 

' Historic de la Participation de la France a la Establish- 
ment des Etats-Unis d'Amerique," M. Henri Doniol ; The 
Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution, 2 vols., 
Charlemagne Tower, Jr. 

20 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

Marquis de La Fayette, Baron cle Vissac, Seigneur de 
Saint-Romain and other places, and of the very noble 
and very powerful lady Madame Marie-Louise-Julie 
De Lariviere." 

What a fine flourish of the clerk's quill is discern- 
ible in this entry! La Fayette's name was Motier — 
Gilbert Motier. " Sieur Motier," Carlyle delights to call 
him. *' Citizen Motier " was his more democratic desig- 
nation among the sans-culottes. Nevertheless, the high- 
flown record of names and titles in the parish register 
has its uses to us. It makes plain the fact that La Fay- 
ette's father, Colonel the Marquis de La Fayette, was 
also lord of Vissac and Saint-Romain, now in ruins 
like so many other feudal castles in La Haute-Loire. 
Let us not, however, obstruct the flow of our own story 
by the accumulation on these pages of too much genea- 
logical data.^ It is the helpful live fact rather than 
the dead and dry matter that shall be presented here. 
In feudal France, the Motier family held the fief called 
Fayette. One of the mediaeval lords, in an existing 
document, wrote of the place as " Villa Faya " — our 
Fayetteville. Apparently the Motiers were one of the 
high families of the feudal order dating back nearly a 
thousand years. The crusading days, Pons Motier, 
Seigneur de La Fayette, was at the siege of Acre in the 
Holy Land. That was in 1250. It is well to make 

^ Yet much of it is interesting, as witness these facts from 
" The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution," by 
Charlemagne Tower, Jr., Vol. i, p. 3 et seq.: "Pons Motier 
married, in 1340, Alix Brun de Champetieres," making thus 
an alliance from which sprang two branches of the family, the 
elder known by the name of Gilbert Motier de La Fayette, and 
the younger by that of Roch Motier de Champetieres. The 
elder of these branches inherited the estates and bore for many 
generations the title of Seigneurs de La Fayette ; whilst the 
other, that of Motier Champetieres, occupied for a long time 
a position of merely local importance, until, by the failure of 
male heirs in the elder branch and through substitutions made 
by will in favor of members of the younger, the titles and 
estates of the family descended to the Motiers de Champe- 
tieres, who were ultimately known as the family of La Fayette. 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

especial note of Pons. He it is who first stands out 
without vagueness as an historic La Fayette. With 
him, too, the tree branches at the trunk. Later we hear 
of Jean Motier de La Fayette, who was slain at Poitiers 
(1356) ; then of Gilbert Motier HI,^" a great Marechal 
under Charles VH ; next of Charles Motier, knighted 
at Rouen; and we know that Gilbert Motier IV was 
similarly distinguished. It is a long roll — that of the 
illustrious de La Fayette. ^^ In fine, the family sent 
its sons forth to fight, generation after generation.^- 
Like some of the families into which it married, it came 
near destroying itself through excessive blood-tribute 
to warring kings and causes. It was Gilbert Motier 
IV of the elder branch, courtier rather than soldier, 
who found time to marry Isabeau de Polignac and 
move from the old Forez country to Saint Romain in 
Chaliergue ; it was Jean Motier de Champetiere, of the 
younger branch, civilian rather than military man, who 
likewise married a Polignac — Jean de Polignac, Bar- 
onne de Vissac, and likewise moved from the pict- 
uresque Dore region to the Chavaniac side of the ridge. 
Bloody battle might claim most of the La Fayettes, but 
not all. The elder branch, however, ran out, with the 

^"The most famous Gilbert Motier de La Fayette of the 
very old days was the one who figured in the English wars. 
Born in 1380, he died a Marshal of France in 1462. He com- 
manded the Franco-Scottish troops in the Battle of Bauge, 
" though he did not. as has sometimes been stated, slay Thomas, 
Duke of Clarence, with his own hand." 

" Antonie, commander of the King's artillery ; Louis, gov- 
ernor of Boulogne, and the Comte Rene-xArmand are histori- 
cally notable Gilbert Motier de La Fayettes. Of the other 
branch, the Roch Motiers, Jean was Senechal of Auyergne ; 
Jean Marie, Baron of Vissac, was a distinguished soldier, and 
Claude Motier, "Chevalier de Vissac" (d. Troyes, 1692), took 
part in sixty-five sieges, not counting the battles. 

"The La Fayettes were widely related by marriage with 
prominent families in France, among them those of Polignac, 
Bourbon-Busset, Marillac, de Tremoille, Montboissier, de 
Lusignem-Lezay, la Riviere and De Bouille."— " The Marquis 
de La Fayette in the American Revolution." 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

Comte Rene-Armand de La Fayette, who " by his will, 
dated the nth of May, 1692, devised the estates of 
the house of Motier de La Fayette, and with them the 
name of La Fayette, to the great-grandfather of our 
Marquis de La Fayette, Charles de Motier de Cham- 
petieres, Chevalier and Baron of Vissag, Seigneur de 
Vedieres, Fargettes, Jax and le Bouschet, to the 
exclusion of his brother, the Abbe Louis de La Fayette, 
who was in holy orders, and of his daughter Marie- 
Magdelaine Motier, dame de La Fayette, who had 
become by marriage Duchess de la Tremoille." This 
lady willed (July 3, 171 7) to her cousin, Jacques Roch 
Motier, " the seigneurie of La Fayette, situate in the 
parishes of Fournols and Eschandelis, in Auvergne." 
As Jacques died without issue, the title passed to his 
younger brother Michel, La Fayette's father. 

Let this brief mention of the men of the family 
suffice ; the space given them is measured with stinting 
thumb in order that we may pay our respects to certain 
of the distinguished women. 

One of the women to bear the name with high honor 
was Louise Angelique Motier de La Fayette (1615- 
1665). A Court cabal in Richelieu's time used her 
because of her beauty, her intellectuality, her accom- 
plishments (especially as a singer and harpist), and 
her fascinating gentleness of mind and manner to win 
Louis XIII away from Mademoiselle de Hautefort. 
Here was one girl in a dramatic plot involving the 
King, the unloved Queen — Anne of Austria — the great- 
est statesman of his age, and over against the first girl 
another of rare charm and quality. Shakespeare him- 
self might well have seized upon their story had it 
dated a century earlier. He doubtless would have given 
the twain fixed places as dramatic heroines in his spark- 
ling sky. Mademoiselle de Hautefort — " Sainte Haute- 
fort " — was of fine figure, tall, with blue eyes, large, 

23 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

open and full of vivacity, aquiline nose, mouth small 
and rosy. Add pearls for teeth and a pair of dimples, 
and you have all the items of her good looks, save that 
" her abundant ringlets of a blond cendre fell around 
a beautiful and stately throat." She was sitting tete-d- 
tete with Anne in the Queen's closet one day when in 
upon them burst the King. Mile. Marie thrust a letter 
she was reading into her bosom. She flushed, the King 
glowered, the Queen awoke the echoes with a laugh. 
Louis, suspecting treason, demanded the letter. Anne, 
in true comedy, imprisoning the hands of her dame 
d'atours, dared him to take it if he wanted it. The 
bashful Louis backed away a pace, hesitated, seized a 
pair of silver tongs, advanced again, retreated and 
finally fled with laughter at his heels. ^^ Then they 
burned the letter — Richelieu's, it is said. That great 
statesman spun webs with the rest of them ; and it was 
he who, being at odds with Anne, pointed out to the 
King Mademoiselle de La Fayette, shy, sedate, spiritual 
— a lovely brunette, with shining eyes, though less ele- 
gant in figure than the reigning platonic favorite. The 
Cardinal's gesture of appreciation was not lost upon 
Louis, who speedily fell under the witchery of Made- 
moiselle de La Fayette. She became his good angel. 
She was, intellectual, sympathetic and with a wide 
range of wholesome interests. She won the King's 
heart ; and he, it seems, came near winning hers. And 
so a considerable comedy, with this pure-minded 
Motier maid as its heroine, was played, plot and coun- 
terplot, through its five acts; and Louise Angelique by 
and by became Mere Angelique — Mere Beaute, Supe- 
rior of the Convent of Chaillot.^* In his *' Madame de 

" " The Married Life of Anne of Austria," by Martha 
Walker Freer, 2 vols. 

"^ The birth of Louis XIV was a sequence of the reconciha- 
tion of Anne and Louis brought about by Angelique after she 
had quit court for convent. 

24 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

Hautefort," Victor Cousin characterizes Mademoiselle 
de La Fayette as '' Madamoiselle La Valliere qui n'a 
pas faille." 

No less noted in the high annals of France was the 
great La Fayette bluestocking. She was Marie Made- 
leine Pioche de la Vergne (1634-1692) who, as " little 
Menie," played wolf with her apron over her head " ; 
grew up a court belle ; and, at 22, married Jean Frangois 
Motier, Comte de La Fayette, brother of the Angelique 
we have just described. After her first sight of the 
Comte, Mile. De la Vergne ^^ had said of this ancestor 
of our La Fayette : " He seems rather stupid — but he 
has so gentle and honest an air, I daresay he will do 
very well." " Booby," she called him later. But, though 
they had three children, he did not do well by her, nor 
did she do well by him. Bride and groom went down 
from bright Paris into dark Auvergne — not Chavaniac, 
but to the chateau of Espinasse. The bride's happiness 
was brief. " Instead of the cries and calls of the 
merchants and vendors of the Pont Neuf and the 
Vaugirard, her ears distinguished but the lowing 
of cattle, the dropping of water on the rocks, the 
strange sound of the bagpipe — Auvergne's national 
instrument. And, in place of the well-known 
noise and bustle of the greatest city in France, 
the deep solitude of the isolated chateau closed in 
upon her." Espinasse had belonged to the La Fay- 
ettes since 1 543 ; there was much glory connected with 
the place, with its portraits of heroes ; but what of these 
things? Nothing illumined such solitude. Nothing 
mattered in Auvergne; and she returned to Paris to 
become the friend of La Rochefoucauld and achieve 

"See Mme. de La Fayette, par le Comte d'Haussonville, 
de rAcademie Frangais, Paris, 1891. Also " The Life and 
Times of Comtesse de La Fayette," by Lillian Rea, 1909. 

25 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

distinction in literature. Boileau thought her "the most 
intellectual woman in France." '* Her style was ' purity 
and transparency itself — the liquida vox of Horace.' " 
In such an age when a ten-volume novel not only could 
find a publisher but readers, Madame de La Fayette 
wrote " The Princess of Montpensier," " Zaida," " The 
Princess of Cleves," and much else besides. They are 
on the shelves still and have this glory : A Sainte-Beuve 
will dust them off and dip into them and write about 
them. Yet while the charming letters of her friend, 
Madame de Sevigne, are read in our day, the long 
romances are altogether out of date. '* See how Mme. 
de La Fayette abounds with friends on every side and 
all ranks," wrote Mme. de Sevigne to her daughter; 
" she has a hundred arms, and they all serve her." She 
wept and wept when M. de la Rochefoucauld died. He 
was no booby from xAuvergne, like her husband; and 
no scamp of a roue, as was Mme. de Sevigne 's. They 
were interesting people in those days — the noblesse; ^^ 
but they were fast turning France, economically 
and governmentally, into what France should not 
be. The canker made a monster of the rose. Never- 
theless, as a Rabelais might fancy, it does not matter 
how much wq dwell upon their charm, Madame Guillo- 
tine, alas ! will soon come kiss most of them to sleep — 

" An illuminating passage in " Madame de Sevigne," by 
Gaston Boissier, is appended because it helps us to understand 
conditions in France at this time: Coulanges, a guest of 
Madame de Louvois, in Lower Burgundy, is taking a trip with 
his cousin. They come to a village; "we say, 'Whose is it?' 
and are answered, ' It belongs to My Lady,' ' Whose is that 
one farthest distant ? ' ' It belongs to My Lady.' But that other 
one I see away over there ? ' 'It belongs to My Lady,' * And 
these woods ? ' ' They belong to My Lady.' 'What an extensive 
plain ! ' ' It belongs to My Lady.' * I behold yonder a fine castle.' 
' That is Nicei, now My Lady's ; a large estate formerly owned 
by the ancient counts of that name. In a word, Madame, every- 
thing in this country belongs to My Lady,' * Yet,' said Madame 
de Sevigne, ' nobody has a cent left ; there is no money 
to be found.* " 

26 




CHAVANIAC. LAFAYETTE'S BIRTHPLACE 
From a drawing by General Carbonel 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

not for sins of their own, individually, but for the sins 
of their system. 

Would that we knew as much about La Fayette's 
mother as we know concerning these celebrities ! She 
came, it appears, of a family much better off than that 
of the father. The Rivieres were rich, and, as a conse- 
quence, influential at court. Her father, Joseph Yves 
Thibauld Hyacinthe, was Marquis de La Riviere. Her 
grandfather was the Comte de La Riviere and de 
Ploeuck, lieutenant-general and captain of the second 
company of the Mousquetaires du Roi (the Mousque- 
toires Noires). 

Upon his marriage, La Riviere's influence at Court 
obtained for La Fayette's father the cross of St. Louis, 
and he was made colonel of the regiment of the Grena- 
diers of France. ^^ Colonel the Marquis de La Fayette 
and Mile, de La Riviere were married on the 22d of 
May, 1/54, and went to^ Chavaniac to live. 

A print of this Chateau de Saint Roch de Cha- 
vaniac,^^ as it appeared in La Fayette's time, made 
from a drawing by La Fayette's friend, General Car- 
bonel, is found in Vol. H of *' Recollections of the 
Private Life of La Fayette," by M. Jules Cloquet, 1836. 
It shows a great house, with two towers, at the top of 
a long acclivity. A swift stream, running over rocks at 
a ford, washes the foot of the hill. In the background 
is a higher hill. M. MacDermot Crawford excuses 

" " The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolu- 
tion," by Charlemagne Tower, Jr. Mr. Tower followed M, 
Doniol and the French documents. 

^^ " Rebuilt in 1701, restored in 1791 by the architect Vau- 
doyen, the Chateau de Chavaniac is today " a great parallelo- 
gram, each side of which measures 23 metres and 18 metres 
in height." At the end of each angle stands a round, solidly built 
tower 15 metres high and 20 metres in circumference, termi- 
nating in a bell tower. The principal fagade faces the north- 
west, but the chateau is so amply provided with windows on all 
sides that the distinction of "front" and "back" lose their 
significance." — " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," by 
M. MacDermot Crawford 1907. 

27 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

its lack of charm, lack of elegance its *' heaviness," 
indeed on account of its elevation and picturesque 
environment. Perhaps the best idea of the place — vil- 
lage and chateau — is given by M. Henri Doniol, author 
of '' Histoire de la Participation de la France, a VEtab- 
lissement des Etats-Unis d'Amerique/' himself a native 
of Auvergne. M. Doniol describes the chateau as 
'" a maison forte, a great and rather heavy manor-house 
fortified in the fourteenth century, situated only a little 
way from the castles of Saint-Romain and Vissac, 
though lower down toward the plain. It arrests the 
attention of the traveller by the odd pigeon-house cov- 
erings of its towers, which have lost their symmetry 
through restoration of the roof after its destruction 
by fire, and by the crenellated terrace of its dungeon. It 
formed, with a little village which grew up about its 
walls on the rugged hills, a parish of the ' CoUecte ' of 
Saint Georges d'Aurat, in the * election ' of Brioude, 
in the province and generalite of Auvergne. From its 
windows, through which there is a view far over the 
surrounding country, the eye discovers the Allier look- 
ing in the direction of Langeac, Paulhaguet toward the 
north, and here and there farm-houses or neighboring 
castles built upon the cone-like hills of the volcanic 
formation." " To-day (adds Mr. Tower) the sur- 
roundings of this axicient place are not much changed. 
The village is now the seat of a commune in the canton 
of Paulhaguet, in the centre of the department of the 
Haute-Loire, and the little town of Brioude has become 
the chief-lieu of the arrondissement. The railways 
have penetrated its solitudes and close by are the * sta- 
tions of Saint-Georges d'Aurat, Rougeac, and La 
Chaux, upon the line from Langeac to Puy and to 
Saint Etienne.' " 

Such was the house from which Colonel the Mar- 
quis departed in order to lead his grenadiers. As was 

28 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

said a few pages back, the French military atmals and 
La Fayette family records tell of many Motiers of 
high rank who participated in battles and sieges. They 
were a brave race, and gave freely of their blood. "The 
La Fayettes all died in battle and died young." So it 
was to be again — one more hero-portrait on the Cha- 
vaniac wall. Jacques Roch Motier, elder brother of 
Colonel de La Fayette, had so fallen and word now 
came that this Colonel himself had died sword in hand. 

But where? Na doubt the young wife knew just 
where she was made a widow, and it is hard to believe 
that Madame de Chavaniac, who adored her brother, 
failed in course of time to impress upon her nephew, 
now head of his house, all the particulars concerning 
the way his hard-riding father died for the glory of 
France. Yet there is a curious discrepancy in La Fay- 
ette's plain assertion that a few weeks before he was 
born, his father was killed in the battle of Minden; 
and in a second and later statement attributed to La 
Fayette with respect to General William Phillips, Bur- 
goyne's artillerist. 

In his Virginia campaign, La Fayette faced Phillips, 
whose cannon shot at Minden, it was vowed, slew 
Colonel de La Fayette. Now as the Grenadier Colonel 
was dead before September 6, 1757, he could not have 
been killed in front of the batteries of Captain Phillips 
on August I, 1759 — the date of the only Minden fight 
in which Phillips is known to have participated. 

Here then is a knot hard to be rid of. It was in the 
Seven Years' War, known on this side as the French 
and Indian War. The Courts of Versailles, Vienna, 
Dresden, and St. Petersburg had set about the task of 
disciplining, and no doubt stripping, the King of 
Prussia. For him it was the deluge. Soldiers swarmed 
in the Hanover region. The pick and flower of the 
French army was there under Marshal Count d'Estrees, 

29 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

who was a good soldier, *' more dangerous after defeat 
than an ordinary general after victory." ^'* There were 
many encounters between his troops and the Anglo- 
Prussian allies. The fighting on the Weser was lively 
in 1757, and heavy in 1759. Early in the summer of 
the year our La Fayette was born, Marshal Count 
d'Estrees sought to cross the Weser, but found allied 
batteries at the fords and iron spikes in the bed of the 
river. On the 13th of July — mark the date, for it is 
most likely that of the fall of Colonel de La Fayette 
and the Prince of Chimay, his intimate friend — the 
French under Generals Broglie and Chevert captured 
Minden. This may well be designated the first battle 
of Minden, as against the second battle of Minden, 
March 14, 1758, when that old walled town (Charle- 
magne, founded it a. d. 802) was recaptured by the 
allies; and as against the third, and still fiercer battle 
of Minden, -° August i, 1759. The knot is made all the 
harder by the fact that M. Doniol abandons all the 
Mindens, concluding that Colonel de La Fayette was 
killed in the fierce onsets of the French at Hasten- 
back, near Minden, on July 26, 1757. This is the 
encounter which Carlyle,^^ ridicules as " the absurdest 
battle in the world." D'Estrees had 70,000 men; His 
Royal Highness, the Duke of Cumberland, 40,000. 
General Chevert, " very fiery," fought well for the 
French ; the Grenadiers, " very obstinate," fought well 
for the British ; but, on the whole, it was a Battle of 
Blunders. Creeping into a hidden hollow in the rear 
of Chevert, an allied division suddenly broke out in 

" " The Life of William, Duke of Cumberland," by Andrew 
Henderson, 1766. 

^° In this battle, Sir George Sackville refused to permit the 
allied cavalry to charge. It was one of the sensations of the 
century. As Lord George Germain, British War Minister, 
he labored to reduce the American colonies. 

^^ " Frederick the Great," by Thomas Carlyle, vol. v, pp. 
127, 128. 

30 



CHAVANIAC— A LORDLING OF AUVERGNE 

thunder. And now the comedy. For the startled com- 
mander-in-chief, who by this accidental act had victory 
almost thrust upon him, fled ; the French fled — it would 
all have been highly amusing but for the fact that each 
side had lost some 1500 men. Historians, however, 
rarely refer to any of the Mindens except the great 
Minden of August i, 1759, when Captain Phillips thun- 
dered on Duke Ferdinand's right wing and when Con- 
tades for the French hurled his 10,000 horse over 
bloody fields. Probably many soldiers of the time 
knew of no other Minden ; and it is possible that they 
pieced the first and third Mindens together in making 
it out that Phillips, who fought the young La Fayette 
in Virginia, had also fought Colonel de La Fayette in 
Westphalia. Certainly there was a Battle of Minden 
six weeks before La Fayette's birth. None other than 
Smollet (our own Dr. Tobias of " Humphrey Clinker " 
fame) in his continuation of the Complete History of 
England (vol. H, p. 103) says that on July 12 and 13, 
1757, the French divisions (of Marechal d'Estrees' 
army) under Broglie and Chevert forded the Weser, 
** attacked Minden and carried it." 

So, digging deep enough, we find that La Fayette 
in all probability was accurate in his statement. 

This was the year when Admiral Byng was shot 
on his own quarter-deck ; when Clive at Plassey (June 
22i) won India for England; when Pitt (June 29) 
grasped power; when the Duke of Cumberland (Sep- 
tember 8, the day after La Fayette*s baptism) gave in 
at far-famed Kloster-Zeven to the Due of Richelieu.-" 

" Grand-nephew of the Cardinal. This marshal, a roue, is 
said to have built his Hotel Richelieu in Paris with bribe money 
paid him by the Duke of Cumberland, who thus barely saved 
his face -in the Kloster-Zeven pact. 



II 

COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

La Fayette was a red-haired boy. And, like 
another youth of the same epoch, subsequently a friend 
of his, Thomas Jefferson, he bore the torch of liberty 
well aloft. For, though as a child he " was delicate 
and puny, requiring constant care," he soon became 
tall enough, as well as strong enough. That he was 
the last of his family — a marquis in his cradle, sole hope 
of his line — could not be forgotten by his mother, his 
grandmother — " a woman of strong character and 
excellent principles, descended from one of the sturdy 
mountain races of Auvergne, the Suat de Chavaniac " — 
nor by his two aunts, who made their homes in the cha- 
teau. One of the aunts was Mademoiselle Marie 
Madelaine de La Fayette and the other, her sister, 
Madame la Comtesse de Chavaniac, who, a cousin's 
widow, was a life-long inmate of the house. This lady 
stands out as a stanch champion of the knightly 
La Fayettes of the past, and undoubtedly she had 
much to do with instilling it into her nephew's mind that 
he must be in every way worthy of them. With her, 
apparently, it was a case of noblesse oblige. With the 
grandmother, the thought was : " Let him be an Auverg- 
nat — free and bold." With the mother rested the duty 
of instructing him in " politeness, good breeding, gen- 
tleness and chivalrous ways." Between them, they 
saw to it that he survived early ills, waxed lusty and 
developed a frame big enough to serve him in his tilts 
with a tempestuous world. 

" They trained him," says Mr. Tower,^ " to manly 
exercise in the development of a vigorous constitution, 

^"The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolu- 
tioM." 

32 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

dreading the approach of the day when he also should 
become a soldier, and go to the wars ; and yet, by force 
of the long family habit, unable to resist the conviction 
that it would surely come, and this was, after all, but 
the natural and proper way for a La Fayette to bear 
worthily his family name and sustain his inherited 
rank and station. The impressions of these early years 
in Auvergne sank deeply into the mind of La Fayette. 
He loved the place, and he spoke of it with tenderness 
and affection in looking back to it through the complex 
vicissitudes of his after-life." In his mother's time, 
there was a portrait of La Fayette as a boy ; but it dis- 
appeared long since from the Chateau de Chavaniac, 
which, indeed, was despoiled during the French Revo- 
lution. Probably the painting depicted him as a minia- 
ture gentilhomme of the wig-and-powder period, with 
beribboned hair, frock-coat, knee-breeches and shining 
buckles. Such a counterfeit presentment of his kins- 
man and comrade, the Comte de Segur, when of like 
age, appears in the ** Memoirs " of that officer. How- 
ever, if we have no youthful La Fayette in oil, there 
is a strong enough pen-portrait. He grew to be ** long- 
limbed, lean, lanky; with a hook-nose, red hair and 
retreating forehead." These dozen words certainly 
offer us a speaking likeness, without gloss or flattery. 
In his " Memoirs of Myself until the Year 1780," 
La Fayette summarizes thus : " It would be . . . 
too minute to dwell upon the particulars of my birth, 
which soon followed the death of my father at Minden ; 
of my education in Auvergne, with tender and revered 
relations; of my removal at twelve years of age to a 
college at Paris, where I soon lost my virtuous mother, 
and where the death of her father rendered me rich, 
although I had been born, comparatively speaking, 
poor ; of some schoolboy successes, inspired by the love 
of glory and somewhat disturbed by that of liberty, 
3 33 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

of my entrance into the regiment of the black mus- 
keteers, which only interrupted my studies on review 
days ; and finally, of my marriage, at the age of sixteen, 
preceded by a residence at the Academy of Versailles." 

With his characteristic skill in generalization, 
La Fayette here jumps forward over more ground 
than we like. It would be better for us if he had taken 
a leaf out of the " Autobiography " of his friend 
Benjamin Franklin. If Franklin had gone to school 
under Abbe Fayon we should have been treated to 
realistic details not only about the College du Plessis, 
one of the thirty-four Colleges of the Latin quarter, 
but about that ancient part of Paris itself, with its 
convent gardens, its leafy spaces and its redolence of 
the learned ones of lone-gone times. The Colleges were 
grouped round about the Sarbonne. Du Plessis subse- 
quently became the Normal School ; then gave place 
to the College of Louis-le-Grand, which was erected 
on its site. Lavoisier, Robespierre and Camille Des- 
moulins made their marks in Du Plessis, to which 
Colonel de La Fayette's widow sent her son in 1768. 

At the same time " his mother's uncle, the Comte 
de la Riviere, placed him in the army listr in order 
that he might secure as early as possible the advantages 
of military promotion. He was enrolled in the Mous- 
quetaires, and occasionally got a holiday from school 
in order to be present at review. In the meantime, his 
mother, anxious to secure for him all the prestige to 
which his family connections entitled him, had come up 
from her province and had been presented at court 
by her aunt, who had married into the influential 
Lusignem-Lezay family." Thus, beardless though he 
was, a tender stripling, La Fayette had all doors open 
to him — college, camp, court. Luckily he thought 

^ " The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolu- 
tion," by Charlemagne Tower, Jr. 

34 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

clearly, learned readily and wrote well. He was 
good at Latin and Greek. Luckily, likewise, he 
was fond of Abbe Fayon ; and for that reason got 
along all the faster with his studies. To dance, know 
the tricks, play graceful games, handle the sword and 
bend the back with oily ease and elegance were essential 
items in the inventory of a young noble's accomplish- 
ments under the ancicM regime; but neither Fayon 
nor his pupil appear to have concerned themselves 
unduly about them. Abbe Fayon could not but see 
that his liberty-loving young lord from the haunts 
of Vercingetorix had capacity, had vigor, had grasp. 
There was a something in him that gave promise of 
a man in the making.^ 

Thus placed and thus developing. La Fayette passed 
two years. The future seemed unclouded. But hard 
blows were to come, and speedily. In Paris, April 12, 
1770, his mother died; and a few days thereafter the 
Marquis de la Riviere, her father, ended his days. At 
thirteen La Fayette was an orphan. His mother's riches 
became his and to this estate were added,presently,large 
Riviere possessions, made all the greater by bequests 
from his uncle, the Comte de la Riviere. With rank, 
riches, and solicitous guardians. La Fayette did not 
need to look hard or far for friends. M. de Segur kept 
his well-being faithfully in mind; and sav/ to it that 
the youth gained the advantageous experiences to be 

^ " When I arrived at college, nothing ever interrupted 
my studies, except my ardent wish of studying without re- 
straint. I never deserved to be chastised ; but, in spitd of my 
usual gentleness, it would have been dangerous to have at- 
tempted to do so ; and I recollect with pleasure that, when I 
was to describe in rhetoric a perfect courser, I sacrificed the 
hope of obtaining a premium, and described the one who, on 
perceiving the whip, threw down his rider. Republican 
anecdotes always delighted me, and when my new connexions 
wished to obtain for me a place at court I did not hesitate 
displeasing them to preserve my independence." — "Memoirs 
Written by Myself," Marquis de La Fayette. 

35 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

had from association with high families, with influen- 
tial personages at Versailles and, upon the coming of 
the Dauphiness, with the younger members of the 
royal family. 

There is nothing that brings us nearer to La Fayette 
at thisi period than a letter in his own hand,* dated the 
8th of February, 1772, and addressed to his cousin, 
Mile, de Chavaniac: 

" I have just received, my dear cousin, your letter, 
and the good account you give me of my grandmother's 
health. After that, which was what first touched my 
heart, I was much interested by the account of the hunt 
of the proprietor of the forests of Lata. I should 
like very much to know whether those dogs that neither 
walk or bark contributed to the success of the expe- 
dition. The details of that hunt would have amused 
me very much ; if I had been speaking to you of a new- 
fashioned cap, I should have thought it my duty to 
have described to you its figure and proportions, with 
a compass in my hands. 

*' Our cousin's marriage is broken off ; there is 
another one on the carpet, but they are obliged to 
lower their tone exceedingly. Mademoiselle de Ronche- 
rolles, a place with Madame de Bourbon, of a thousand 
crowns a year, and five thousand small livres a year — 
that is the whole amount. You see that this is a very 
short abridgement of the other intended matches. My 
tmcle, who came to see me the other day, consents 
to the marriage, on condition, that the Prince de Conde 
will promise one of his regiments of cavalry to the 
cousin. Madame de Montboisser thinks this is asking 
too much, and told M. le Marquis de Canillac that in 
truth, if he were so difficult, her husband would no 
longer take part in his affairs ; this offended him, and 
some high words passed on both sides. The nephew 
does not care much about the marriage. He said, there 
were in his own province far better matches, which 
he named that would not be refused him. 

** I thought I had written you that Cardinal de la 

*Memoires, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General 
La Fayette." Published by his family, 1838, 2 vols. Vol. i, 
note pp. 3 and 4. 

36 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

Roche-Aimon was Abbe de St. Germain. It is said that 
M. de Briges has the barony de Mercoeur, M. de la 
Vauguyon has died, Httle regretted either by the court 
or by the town. The ball of last Thursday is put off 
to the 15th, that is to say, for a week hence. I dined, 
the day before yesterday, Thursday, with M. de^ la 
Tour d'Auvergne, who is on a complimentary footing 
with M. de Turenne, now Duke de Bouillon. He told 
us he should lose perhaps a million from politeness. 
You will recognize him by that phrase. 

" Adieu, dear cousin ; my respects, if you please, to 
all the family; M. de Fayon presents his to you, and 
I remain your obedient servant, 

" La Fayette." 

There is an aristocratic feeling in this letter. La 
Fayette is interested in affairs at Chavaniac, but he 
does not yearn to fly from Paris to the wintry woods 
of Auvergne. It is evident that while his heart is 
warm for his old home, there is growing warmth in it 
for Paris. He will find a wife there by and by. The 
comedy element in the diplomacy of the dowry amuses 
him. So does the palace talk at Versailles. And 
what a court it was in which La Fayette sometimes 
found himself ! There was glitter and gold and ele- 
gance and politeness ; on the surface, he saw much to 
charm ; under cover, as he soon learned, there was cor- 
ruption. Though we may pass over such embroidered 
tales as those that tell of the exploits of the Chevalier 
d'Eon de Beaumont, it is necessary here to take cogni- 
2:ance, only glancingly, however, of the scandals involv- 
ing the household of Louis XV. When the gallant 
Dumoriez was quitting Paris on an errand closely 
connected with the question of war or peace for 
Europe, he hinted to the Duke de Choiseul of embar- 
rassments due to the Comtesse du Barry's power over 
Louis. Choiseul, the man who created the navy that 
saved the American colonies, the responsible minister of 
the kingdom, nodded. " That hussy is giving me 

37 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

trouble," said he. Jeanne Vaubernier she was — a com- 
mon woman. The King had picked her out of the gut- 
ter. However, Choiseul had been all too docile under 
du Barry's predecessor, Madame Pompadour. He had 
to wink at things. He soon fell. But La Fayette 
found good people, as well as fine people, at court. 
Many made a mock of religion in those days ; but to the 
multitudes religion was as it had ever been. The 
Polish aristocracy was corrupt like that of other mis- 
governed lands. Yet Queen Marie Leckzinska, what- 
ever her shortcomings were, had kept her skirts free 
and her heart pure. In her day, before du Barry's 
shadow fell, she protected decency, honor, piety and 
innocence. So, for that matter, did the dissolute King's 
three sisters. Few heroines in history evoke more pity 
and kind regretful thoughts than does Madame Eliza- 
beth, of whom anon we shall hear poignant things 
just as we shall hear of tragic happenings involving 
many another character in the great drama of 1789-94. 

Though part boy still, La Fayette must have become 
well enough acquainted with Versailles under Louis XV 
to understand its elegance, its pomp, its hollowness, 
and something of its very great wickedness. He had 
certain unforgetable experiences there. He was losing 
some of his Auvergnian gauchcrie, though happily not 
his liberty-loving propensity ; and he was in the good 
graces of those who happened to be on the qui vive 
for blue blood in combination with bank notes. Not 
that there was lack of other fine friends. We have, 
for instance, in Lady Morgan's " France," a clear 
account of how he went with Marie Antoinette to a 
hal masque: 

" ' Is it true,' I asked, ' that you went to a bal 
masque at the opera, with the Queen of France, Marie 
Antoinette, leaning on your arm, the King knowing 
nothing of the matter till after your return ? ' 

38 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

" * I am afraid so,* he said. ' She was so indiscreet, 
and I can conscientiously add, so innocent; however, 
the Comte d'Artois was of the party, and we were all 
young, enterprising and pleasure-loving. But what 
was most absurd in the adventure was, that when I 
pointed out Mme. du Barry — whose figure and favorite 
domino I knew — the Queen expressed the most anxious 
desire to hear her speak and bade me intriguer her. 
She answered me flippantly, and I am sure if I had 
offered her my other arm, the Queen would not have 
objected to it; such was the esprit d'aventure at that 
moment in the Court of Versailles, and in the head of 
the haughty daughter of Austria.' " 

It seems in order just here to speak further of the 
" elegant and vivacious Marie Antoinette," since in 
visualizing her we, at the same look, take in by the 
eye the man we are after. A powerful white light has 
been put down by biographers and historians upon this 
particular period. Searching for the prologues of a 
thousand tragedies to be enacted a decade beyond, they 
have lit the France of 1 770-1 790, and especially Paris 
and Versailles, with concentrated flashes. 

It would be difficult to collect a moiety of the 
countless things — spiteful, cruel, slanderous — said 
against Marie Antoinette. Notwithstanding, she is 
much more likable than the Dauphin, her husband, who 
was fat, gluttinous, boorish, fond of his fowling-piece 
and given to blacksmithing when the mood for hammer, 
anvil, leather-apron and smutty hands came over him. 
They were misfit mates. Goethe tells of visiting the 
tent spread for her on an island in the Rhine when 
she came from Marie Theresa's royal nest at Vienna 
on the way to Paris to become Dauphiness. The tent 
walls were hung with a scene depicting Medea's mar- 
riage — most tragic of events ; and she, the fair traveler, 
a mere girl of fifteen, bride-elect, who was to leave here 

39 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the last stitch of her Austrian raiment before clothing 
herself in her new garments, must have undergone 
certain shocks and sorrows in that tent even if unfamil- 
iar with the classic tale. 

She certainly was human. " She laughed when she 
felt like it, and dressed as she pleased. She had the 
warm feelings, thq frivolous tendencies of youth, and 
she indulged them. If she felt like romping, she 
romped. If the evening was dull in the palace, as 
most evenings were, she was apt as not to get up 
a game of blind man*s buff. Upon her tongue she put 
no restraint at all." She called one lady of the court 
" Madame Collars ; " another *' Madame Hundred- 
Year-Old ; " and another ** Madame Bundle of Stuff." 
As for Madame de Noailles she was " Madame Eti- 
quette." Asking with a girl's tears for sympathy, she 
found starch, stiffness, whalebone and hooks — in a 
word, etiquette and a haughty hectoring. It hardly 
helped matters that the great dame of honor, Mme. de 
Noailles, was a model of virtue, piety and benevolent 
intention. She and the King's excellent sisters knew 
the court and its wicked ways ; they wished to put the 
girl on her guard, to suppress her effusiveness, to guide 
her in such manner that she herself would learn to 
be coldly correct in her own thoughts and conduct 
and piously and conventionally blind to the evils inher- 
ent in the customary situation.^ The King of France, 
they assume, is privileged to live an immoral life 
undisturbed ; and if he be so hardened as to compel the 
true queen to bend a knee to the harlot enthroned with 

' Her personal charms, which Burke has exaggerated, 
consisted more in her air of dignity, the nobleness of her 
figure and the grace of her deportment, which all bespoke 
the queen, rather than in her features which wanted sweetness 
and regularity. She had weak or inflamed eyes ; but the 
combination which was brilliant, her youth, the richness of 
her dress, in which she showed exquisite taste, struck all who 
saw her. " Wraxall's Memoirs," vol. i, p. 115. 

40 




MARQUISE DE LAFAYETTE 

From a miniature in the possession of the family 

She was a de Noailles — Adrienne d'Ayen. She was a bride at fifteen, 
and bore LaFayette four children. A devout woman, she developed under 
adversity qualities of heroism which make her equally with her husband a 
character in history. She was with LaFayette in Olmutz dungeon. 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

him, then must sense, sensibility, and all human decency 
be smothered and the bitter trial endured. 

M. McDermot Crawford in *' Madame de La Fay- 
ette and her Family," ventures to surmise that the 
Marie Antoinette-La Fayette episode described in 
Lady Morgan's " France " should find its true date in 
the spring of 1774. "This," Crawford says, "must 
have taken place before his (La Fayette's) marriage, 
which occurred in April, 1774, as the death of Louis 
XV, on the tenth day of May, scarcely a month later, 
put an end to the escapades of la du Barri and other 
ladies attendant on his * well beloved ' majesty." 

La Fayette was at the du Barry supper at Trianon 
palace when Louis XV went over in a fainting fit. The 
whole kingdom and the rest of the world heard the 
news, and it was supplemented with something still 
more startling, to wit: That his Majesty had been 
seized with malignant small-pox and that he was 
doomed. Historians dwell with gusto upon the pest- 
room scenes, when rival court factions, braving alike 
the stench and the deadly peril, crowded around the 
bed of the stricken debauchee. They were not there 
to pray, but to petition for favors ; and, when, at dead 
of night, the signal candle in a palace window was 
snuffed out they broke away with indecent haste and 
in levity to greet the new sovereign — Louis XVI and his 
young Queen, Marie Antoinette. 

This happened to be the spring when La Fayette 
drew his best prize in life — Madame de La Fayette, who 
was Mademoiselle Marie Adrienne Franqoise de 
Noailles, second daughter of the Due d'Ayen, Marechal 
du Camp et Armees du Roi, later (in 1793), Due de 
Noailles. The Noailles family was noble, rich and a 
power at court. The Sieurs de Noailles had been 
Crusaders. Cardinal or courtier, or marechal or 
admiral — they were ever in the forefront. Madame 

41 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

de Maintenon picked a de Noailles as a husband for 
her niece and forced the marriage with gold. 

Madame de La Fayette's most noted maternal ances- 
tor was Henry Frangois d'Agusseau, Chancellor of 
France. Her grandmother, Anne Louise Frangoise 
Dupre, first wife of the Chancellor's son, was the lovely 
and gentle " Dame de Lagrange-Bleneau-en-Brie." 
This estate of Lagrange will in time enter largely into 
our story. M. de Segur, uncle of La Fayette and his 
companion in his American undertaking, married a 
daughter of M. d'Agusseau de Fresnes by a second 
wife. The only child of the Dame de Lagrange, Hen- 
riette, became the wife of Jean Paul Frangois, Due 
d'Ayen. It was not an ideal union. Henriette had lost 
some of her loveliness of looks on account of small-pox. 
She was a woman with a will, pious, scrupulous ; 
M. d'Ayen liked to lead a different life. Madame du 
Barri said he was " stupid, like all his race," neverthe- 
less she must have felt the sting of his wit, since she 
spoke of him as " malicious and a fiend." But du Barri 
was hardly angelic herself. To her the Dauphin was 
"that fat, ill-mannered boy." At any rate, the duke 
it was who insisted upon La Fayette as a husband for 
his daughter. Mademoiselle Adrienne, namesake of her 
grandfather Adrien, second Marechal de Noailles. His 
wife had other ideas, other plans. There were four 
daughters, Louise (one will pity her later — gentle soul 
that she was) ; Adrienne, Mme. de Thesen and Pauline, 
married in after years to the Marquis de Grammont. 
Louise, a year older than Adrienne, who was born 
November 2, 1759, became the Vicomtesse de Noailles, 
wife of her cousin, whom we shall hear of in America. 
Madame de La Fayette, writing of Louise and her- 
self, says:® 

* Notice sur Mme, la Duchesse d'Ayen, par Af me. de La 
Fayette, sa fille, Paris, 1869. 

42 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

*' We were scarcely twelve years old when M. de 
La Fayette was proposed as a husband for one of us, 
he himself being at that time but fourteen. His 
extreme youth and the isolated character of his posi- 
tion, for he had lost all his near relatives and was 
without anyone in whom he had confidence to guide 
him, as well as his large fortune entirely free from 
restrictions, which my mother considered a source of 
great danger, led her after careful consideration, to 
refuse him, in spite of the good reports of his character 
that we heard from all those who knew him. She 
persisted in her refusal for several months." 

La Fayette had too much money to suit Mme. 
d'Ayen. She was sincerity itself. But she thought 
better of the matter finally, and made it a match — to 
the joy of the worldly duke, her husband. She stipu- 
lated that " steps shall be taken to complete the educa- 
tion of M. de La Fayette;" that the marriage should 
be put off for two years ; and that after the nuptials, 
they should live at the Hotel de Noailles for another 
two years. Then writes Madame de La Fayette, "She 
accepted him whom she afterward cherished as a most 
tenderly loved son, whose sterling value she learned 
and justly understood from the first moment she knew 
him. Her consent thus obtained, brought about a 
reconciliation between her and my father. Our joy 
at this event cannot be expressed in words, and the 
memory of that day, the 21st of September, 1772, shall 
never be effaced either from my heart or my mind." 

It was a secret,"^ however, as far as Adrienne was 
concerned, that she was to marry La Fayette. Her 
mother kept it from her purposely, so that the two 

'As we learn from "Madame de La Fayette and her 
Family" it was not until the end of the summer, 1772, that 
Mme. d'Ayen spoke to Louise of the Vicomte de Noailles, 
who was the second son of the Marechal de Mouchy and 
" Madame Etiquette," and the younger brother of the Prince de 
Poix. As wise Mme. d'Ayen knew " the flighty propensities of 
young minds," she feared lest their education might suffer. 

43 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

might meet of tener ; and, maybe, fall in love. Where- 
upon fall in love they did. Adrienne did not suspect 
her welcome — her truly joyous — fate until after the 
marriage of Louise on May 12, 1773, in the choir of 
the church of Saint Roch. It was a crowded church 
and a brilliant wedding. Adrienne's own marriage was 
a similarly brilliant event of Monday, April 11, 1774. 
The vicaire general de L'archeveche de Paris, Abbe 
Paul de Murat, La Fayette's cousin, performed the 
ceremony. The La Fayettes went to the Hotel de 
Noailles to live and resume their studies, according to 
the prenuptial agreement exacted by Mme. d'Ayen. 

The Hotel de Noailles in the Rue St. Honore had 
been in the Noailles family since 1 7 1 1 . It was a princely 
palace, with its rich and artistic decorations, its halls, 
apartments, courts, private chapel, and picture gallery ; 
its stables big enough to house a squadron of cavalry ; 
and its retinue of servants. Few vestiges now remain 
of the stately structure on its spacious grounds and 
gardens, with a fine view opening into the pleasure- 
giving vista of the Tuileries. Instead, we have the 
rue d'Alger, the rue de Rivoli and the Hotel St. James„ 
For two years, as had been agreed, La Fayette paid a 
pension alimentaire of 8000 livres a year; and with 
a dowry of 200,000 livres, his wife had an income of 
9000 livres. Mme. d'Ayen grew fond of La Fayette. 
She now tried to supply the place of the mother he had 
lost. She succeeded. At least, in part, though there 
is evidence that even she, gentle-natured and untiring in 
her devotion to her children whose entire confidence she 
had, was dubious at times as to some of his ways and 
uncertain of their meaning. She was a " grand Dame," 
yet the epitome of domestic perfection." ^ 

* " See Notice sur Mme. la Duchesse d'Ayen," par Madame 
de La Fayette, Paris, 1869; " Vie de Madame de La Fayette," 
par Madame de Lasteyrie, Paris, 1859. 

44 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

This is Adrienne's pen-sketch of her when, having 
dined with her at three o'clock, Louise and her sisters 
followed Mme. d'Ayen to her bedroom, a stately apart- 
ment " hung in crimson damask, embroidered in gold." 

" The duchesse usually seated herself in a large 
easy chair near the fireplace, having conveniently at 
hand her snuff-box and her knitting and her books. 
The four daughters grouped themselves around her, 
the eldest occupying chairs, the younger ones stools, all 
disputing the coveted place near the bergere." 

" She was a splendid example of virtue and high 
principle," writes Mr. Tower, " amid the surroundings 
of the long and dissolute reign then drawing to its close. 
Her influence was very great upon the mind of La 
Fayette, toward whom she showed a loving tender- 
ness; and he mourned her bitterly afterward, when 
during the Reign of Terror in France, she went with 
admirable fortitude to the guillotine, in expiation of 
crimes which certainly the actions of her own life had 
no part." 

In his "Souvenirs et Anecdotes siir le r^gne de 
Louis XVI," Comite Louis de Phillippe d,e Segtir 
devotes some space to an account of a little incident 
relating to La Fayette. Nothing could give a clearer 
idea of him — a French Washington, so to say ; that is, 
Washington in his youth. The passage follows in full : 

" At every period of his life and above all in his 
youth, La Fayette displayed a grave and cold exterior 
v/hich sometimes gave to his demeanor an air of timid 
ity and embarrassment which really did not belong to 
him. His reserved manners and his silent disposition 
presented a singular contrast to the petulence and the 
ostentatious loquacity of persons of his own age; but 
under this exterior, to all appearances so phlegmatic, he 
concealed an active mind, the most determined character 
and the most enthusiastic spirit. Of this fact I was 
better enabled to judge than others. During the pre- 

45 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ceding winter he had become attached to a lady as 
amiable as she was beautiful, and, having erroneously 
conceived an idea that I was his rival, in a fit of jeal- 
ousy he had put aside all considerations of our friend- 
ship and had passed the greater part of the night with 
me, endeavoring to prevail on me to decide by the sword 
which of us should be the favored suitor of the lady 
to whom I had no pretensions. Some days after our 
quarrel and reconciliation, I could not refrain from 
laughing when I heard the Marechal de Noailles and 
other members of his family entreat me to use my 
influence with him to animate his torpidity, to rouse 
him from his inaction, and to communicate some action 
to his character. It is easy to conceive their aston- 
ishment when they learned suddenly that this young 
sage of nineteen, so cool and so indifferent, had been so 
far carried away by the love of glory and of danger as 
to intend to cross the ocean and fight in the cause of 
American freedom." 

No wonder Madame la Duchesse d'Ayen found 
this son-in-law of hers something of a puzzle. La Fay- 
ette had long before quit the College du Plessis for the 
Academic de Versailles and was under the guidance 
of a veteran soldier, M. de Noailles. Comte de Segur 
tells another story of La Fayette in connection with 
the ** Epee de Bois," a Paris cafe, where young bloods 
met. He was a participant, it seems, in an attempt of 
the frequenters of that cafe to travesty and ridicule the 
Parliament of Paris. The ringleaders got into trouble 
but were soon rescued by influential friends. La Fay- 
ette could not stand strong potations. He was " a poor 
drinker and dancer." Some tales are told of his awk- 
wardness on the glassy floor. He was still " the great 
boy with the red hair," but now quite tall enough to 
look over the heads of his critics. He thus speaks of 
himself in his Memoirs : ^ 

^ " Memoirs de Ma Main," i, 7. 
46 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

" I have still less to say relating to my entrance into 
the world; to the short favor I enjoyed as constituting 
one member of a youthful society; to some promises 
of the regiment de Noailles; and to the unfavorable 
opinion entertained of me owing to my habitual silence 
when I did not think the subjects under discussion 
worthy of being canvassed. The bad effects produced 
by disguised self-love, and an observing disposition, 
were not softened by a natural simplicity of manner, 
which, without being improper on any great occa- 
sion, rendered it impossible for me to bend to the 
graces of the court or to the charms of a supper 
in the capital/* 

He adds : " I was delighted with republican stories, 
and when my relatives secured a place for me at court, 
I did not hesitate to give offense in order to obtain my 
independence." His father-in-law it was who planned 
that La Fayette should learn " to crook the pregnant 
hinges of his knee." That was to be his career. He 
was to become a hanger-on of royalty — to attach him- 
self to the household of the Comte de Provence. Louis 
XV left three sons, all of whom became Kings of 
France — Louis XVI, Louis XVHI and Charles X. 
Of the latter two, the Comte de Provence figures in his- 
tory as " fat," " unwieldy," *' a plotter," who, in course 
of time intrigued with Mirabeau, Robespierre, Barras, 
Bonaparte and Talleyrand. His younger brother, the 
Comte d'Artois, was a rake, " a wit," gay, Marie 
Antoinette's companion in freaks and frolics — the first 
to flee from France in the bloody days to come. Prov- 
ence and Artois had incomes of $400,000. " The 
Noailles family, into which La Fayette married, drew 
annually from the treasury," writes Thomas E. 
Watson,^*^ " 2,000,000 francs, or $400,000. The Polig- 
nac family (who intermarried with the old-time 
La Fayettes) were given 700,000 francs in pensions. 
Offices, salaries, pensions, gifts, perquisites. Nobles 

" " The Story of France," vol. ii, p. 26. 
47 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

hold places without duties. The holder simply draws 
his breath and his salary." 

La Fayette, let it be noted, turned his back on 
the Count de Provence; on the court; on sinecures; 
and, incidentally, on his wife's relatives. It does one 
good to read of such an act. True, La Fayette was not 
a struggling young man to whom money meant much. 
He, perhaps, does not deserve the credit we should 
give him if he had been unplaced and unprovided ; still 
it must have cost him a great deal to run counter to the 
Marechal de Noailles. The story of the way he rid 
himself of unappreciated honor has a touch of comedy : 

** Without openly opposing the will of those he 
loved, he managed in the following manner to offend 
the prince to whose person they wished to attach 
him. Having met the Comte at a masquerade ball, and 
recognizing him under his mask, in the conversation 
which then ensued the Comte endeavoring to display 
his memory to advantage, La Fayette remarked * that 
it was unnecessary to take so much trouble to prove 
that memory was the wit of fools.' ^ The Comte, learn- 
ing later that the Marquis had been aware of his incog- 
nito, never forgave him, and the matter ended. Ended, 
indeed, for a reconciliation never took place between 
La Fayette and that prince, later King." ^^ 

" The men who leave the court for a minute," said 
the wise La Bruyere, " renounce it forever." It was 
so with La Fayette. Despite his yotithfulness, he must 
have understood La Bruyere's apothegm. He must 
have made up his mind to take the road to freedom. 
There was more meaning in the meetings of the satiri- 
cal young nobles at the " Epee de Bois " than one is apt 
to recognize. Some of them, many of them, were filled 
with rebellious feeling against the corruptions of the 
court under Louis XV. La Fayette, when he had 

""Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," by M. 
MacDermot Crawford, 1907. 

48 



COLLEGE, COURT, CAMP 

viewed the evils at Versailles at close range, decided to 
hold himself aloof from them. He could not bow and 
scrape and wear a mask all his life, and tell lies as well 
as act them. 

If the excellent Madame d'Ayen was unable to 
understand her Adrienne's husband fully it is no won- 
der. There was a hint of the eagle in the young man. 
La Fayette was with her not a little, and she could 
observe him well. For instance, in September, 1774, 
La Fayette, who had but lately joined his regiment at 
Metz, returned thence in order that he might be inocu- 
lated against small-pox. " Mme. d'Ayen took a house 
at Chaillot for the purpose, where she shut herself up 
with the Marquis and his wife until the tiresome period 
was over." But soon there was to come a surprise 
for the Duchesse, as for her daughter, and indeed for 
all La Fayette's relatives and friends. The young eagle 
was destined to take a long, strong flight. 



Ill 

FOR HUMAN RIGHTS— THE AMERICAN 
REVOLUTION 

The spark that fired La Fayette's enthusiasm for 
the cause of liberty in America fell from the after- 
dinner pipe of a royal raconteur — ^William Henry, 
Duke of Gloucester, brother of George III. We have 
seen that La Fayette left Metz for Paris in the autumn 
of 1774 to undergo inoculation. Later he returned 
to that garrison ; and rejoined the *' regiment de 
Noailles," commanded by his cousin, Prince de Poix. 
He himself was captain. It will be noted that he had 
been transferred from the Mousquetaires Noirs. In 
August, 1775,^ he attended a dinner given by the com- 
mandant at Metz, Comte Francois de Broglie, in honor 
of the Duke of Gloucester, who with his Duchess was 
visiting that city. 

This Duke was a great traveler. It is said that, 
one day, his carriage entered a small street in Rome 
just as the Pope's equipage drove in at the other end. 
At once it became a case of Gaston and Alphonse. The 
street was muddy. Many passers-by were kneeling until 
His Holiness should have pleased to depart. But the 

^ So says Henri Doniol. La Fayette told Jared Sparks, 
in Paris in 1828, that the dinner to the Duke was in August 
1776. M. Doniol and Charlemagne Tower, Jr., say he was out 
of his reckoning a whole year. He did not have his papers to 
go by; for they were destroyed at Chavaniac. M. Doniol 
produces evidence in his " La France and Les Etats-Unis," 
quoting letters in the archives of France (Depot de la Guerre, 
vol. no. 3694). One of these letters dated Lille, July 30, 1775, 
from the Prince de Montbarey to the Marquis de Castries 
announces the arrival of the Duke and the Duchess of Glouces- 
ter, which says that they were going to Valenciennes, Rheims, 
Verdun, Metz, Luneville, Strasbourg, Munich, Innsbruck, 
Venice and then on to Rome. Mr. Tower gives other letters of 
confirmation. 

50 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

Pope, in his politeness, would not budge until the Duke 
had driven on. William Henry was really much 
esteemed. It has been said that he **' hated " his brother 
the King. The truth is he was incapable of such a 
thing as brotherly hatred. He was infatuated with his 
own wife. He was at odds with George III because 
the King had frowned upon him on account of his mar- 
riage with the Countess Dowager of Waldegrave. The 
Waldegraves had played a notable part in the life of 
King George. The old Earl of Waldegrave, his " gov- 
ernor," liked to be called a " man of the world." George 
III spoke of him as " a depraved and worthless man." 
On the other hand, Waldegrave said of his critic : " I 
found his Royal Highness uncommonly full of princely 
prejudices contracted in the nursery and improved by 
Bedchamber Women and Pages of the Back Stairs." 
Lady Waldegrave was Maria, natural daughter of 
Sir Edward Walpole. 

When the Earl died she married, clandestinely, the 
Duke of Gloucester. " William Henry," concludes the 
King's biographer, Beckles Willson,- '' was George's 
favorite brother : and there were some points of resem- 
blance in character between them. The lady who cap- 
tured his affections had not only a handsome person, 
but had many endearing and engaging traits, and she 
was ambitious. When Waldegrave, who was old 
enough to be her father, left her a widow, she received 
an offer from the Duke of Portland, regarded as, apart 
from the princes of the blood royal, the best match in 
Britain. Yet the mother of Lady Waldegrave had 
begim her career as a milliner. For a long time the 
connection between the Duke of Gloucester and Horace 
Walpole's niece was regarded as merely a youthful 
infatuation which would lead to nothing serious. Not 

^ " George III as Man, Monarch and Statesman," by 
Beckles Willson, 1907. 

51 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

until June, 1772, was it proclaimed to the world that 
their actual marriage had taken place nearly six years." 

George III, " too angry to become reconciled," 
nevertheless had the marriage legitimized. " I cannot 
deny," he wrote to Lord North, " that on the subject of 
this Duke my heart is wounded. I have ever loved 
him with the fondness one bears to a child." The mar- 
riage he characterized as ** a highly disgraceful step ; " 
and of the Duchess he wrote : " I never can think of 
placing her in a situation to answer her extreme pride 
and vanity ; " and, though in the end he relented, it was 
long before the brothers grew fully reconciled. Such 
were the guests of the French officers at Metz. At this 
period the pair were still out of grace in the court 
circle at home, though recognized on the Continent as 
high royalties to be feted and favored and flattered 
with polite attention. They were traveling as the Earl 
and Countess of Connaught. While apologizing for this 
seeming digression, we may add that, like his brother, 
the Duke of Cumberland, William Heniy, differed 
with King George on the American coercion. 

And now for the dinner. It was given on the 
eighth of August at the house of the Comte de Broglie, 
who, as one of the commanders in the Hanoverian 
and Westphalian campaigns, had been well acquainted 
with Colonel de La Fayette, and for that reason looked 
upon the son all the more regardfully. With several 
other officers, La Fayette, " in his handsome dress 
uniform of blue and silver," was a guest at this long- 
drawn-out banquet given by a prince of France to a 
prince of England. Let us now summon Jared 
Spark,^ who had an account of the dinner from 
the lips of La Fayette himself, and who shall tell us 
what happened : 

'"The Writings of Ge©rge Washington," by Jared 
Sparks, vol. v, appendix, No. i, p. 445. 

52 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

" Despatches had just been received by the Duke 
from England, and he made their contents the topic 
for conversation ; they related to American affairs. 
The details were new to La Fayette; he listened with 
eagerness to the conversation, and prolonged it by 
asking questions of the duke. His curiosity was deeply 
excited by what he had heard, and the idea of a people 
fighting for liberty had a strong influence upon his 
imagination; the cause seemed to him just and noble, 
from the representations of the duke himself ; and, 
before he left the table, the thought came into his head 
that he would go to America, and offer his services to a 
people who were struggling for liberty and independ- 
ence. From that hour he could think of nothing but 
this chivalrous enterprise." 

Of course this was the turning point of La Fayette's 
life. Historic, indeed, was the scene at the Command- 
ant's board in that old garrison town two hundred miles 
east of Paris. The impression made upon La Fayette, 
comments Charlemagne Tower, " was of the kind which 
goes deep down into men's hearts and remains there 
forever." 

Until that hour La Fayette knew America mainly 
as a geographical expression. He had never counted 
upon becoming a transatlantic campaigner. On the 
contrary, the thought of Continental America was a 
bitter one with patriotic young Frenchmen since France 
had lost Canada. When they contemplated service 
beyond the sunset seas, it was the French West Indies, 
they customarily animadverted upon. 

But let us not pass so swiftly along on the current 
of this high adventure as to lose sight of dates and 
difficulties, and the extraordinary diplomatic situation 
in which the opposing nations were involved. La Fay- 
ette did not feverishly pack his saddle-bags with gold, 
take post for the first Atlantic port and sail for Amer- 
ica on the wings of favoring winds. He did nothing 
on the spur of the moment, except as he says, to dedicate 

53 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

himself to Liberty. In his own simple words : " At the 
first news of the quarrel my heart was enrolled in it." 

He said nothing at Metz concerning his knightly 
purpose, but kept his secret until he found himself 
back in Paris, where he guardedly pursued his inquiries. 

" When he arrived in the city," continues Mr. 
Sparks, " he confided his scheme to two young friends, 
Count Segur and Viscount de Noailles, and proposed 
that they should join him. They entered with enthusi- 
asm into his views; but as they were dependent on 
their families, it was necessary to consult their parents, 
who reprobated the plan and refused their consent. 
The young men faithfully kept La Fayette's secret; 
his situation was more fortunate, as his property was 
at his own disposal and he possessed an annual revenue 
of nearly two hundred thousand livres." Then, in 
some roundabout way, adroitly, without exciting sus- 
picion as to his own desires in the matter. La Fayette 
put it to a test whether Mme. d'Ayen, Mme. de La 
Fayette and others near to him would demur should 
he undertake an adventure as far as America. He was 
not left in doubt as to their feeling. In his search 
for a tentative " yes," he got an unmistakable " no " — 
a most positive denial. La Fayette was not long in 
learning many of the things he wished to ascertain 
on the subject of America. Eager for the facts, topo- 
graphical, political, social, he found many veterans 
with American experiences, met many men older than 
himself whose attention had been sharply challenged 
by the great drama of liberty in process of enactment 
overseas, and struck up acquaintance with others who 
like himself were young and fired with zeal for romantic 
exploits on the other side of the globe. 

In the words of Louis Rosenthal : * 

* " America and France," by Louis Rosenthal, 1882. 
54 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

" At the capital, in the province, at the watering 
places, in the chateaus of the rich and in the entresol 
of the politicians and men of letters, the American 
resistance to English demand was the theme of general 
conversation." The " rebels " of British invective 
were " insurgens " in France. *' It was at Spa," writes 
Count de Segur, " that I learned for the first time the 
events which indicated an approaching and mighty 
revolution in America. On my return to Paris I found 
the same agitation prevailing also there in the public 
mind." According to Sainte-Beuve, Joseph de Maistre 
declared : *' Liberty, insulted in Europe, has taken 
flight to America, to another hemisphere. It floats 
over the icy shores of Canada, it gives arms to the 
peace-loving Pennsylvanian, and from the midst of 
Philadelphia it cries out to the English, " Why have 
you outraged me — ^you who boast that you are great 
only by my means ? " 

Now that his eyes were open. La Fayette could see 
in the public prints American references to which he 
had paid little attention prior to the history-making 
gossip of a king's brother who, with his lovely Duchess, 
was having a good time among refined and elegant 
gentlefolk of the ancien regime. There were Stamp 
Act stories. There were accounts of the doings of 
** The Sons of Liberty." La Fayette liked the phrase. 
Otis, Adams, Faneuil Hall, town meeting, Boston mas- 
sacre, Patrick Henry, bill of rights. Continental Con- 
gress — these were talked of. La Fayette listened. And 
this Washington ? — the man who had said, " Our lordly 
masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing 
less than the deprivation of American freedom." Who 
was he? Lexington, Concord — there had been actual 
fighting; yes, for a thousand miles along the Atlantic 
Coast, America was in a ferment. Worse! In 
among the Appalachies and back of them were untold 

55 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

numbers of savages who threatened to become active 
British alHes. This was, indeed, a most unhappy, a 
most dangerous, situation for the three million of mor- 
tals who dwelt between the sea and the mountains — 
between the wave of redcoats and the wave of redmen 
about to be set in motion to engulf them. 
Once more we call upon Mr. Sparks : ^ 

" La Fayette next explained his intention to the 
Count de Broglie, who told him that his project was 
too chimerical, and fraught with so many hazards, 
without a prospect of the least advantage, that he could 
not for a moment regard it with favor, nor encourage 
him with any advice which would prevent him from 
abandoning it immediately. When La Fayette found 
him thus determined, he requested that at least he 
would not betray him, for he was resolved to go to 
America. The Count de Broglie assured him that his 
confidence was not misplaced. * But,' said he, ' I have 
seen your uncle die in the Wars of Italy ; I witnessed 
your father's death at the battle of Minden ; and I will 
not be an accessory to the ruin of the family.' He then 
used all his powers of argument and persuasion to 
divert La Fayette from his purpose, but in vain. Find- 
ing his determination unalterable, the Count de Broglie 
said, as he could render him no aid, he would introduce 
him to the Baron de Kalb, who he knew was seeking 
an opportunity to go to America, and whose experience 
and counsels might be valuable." 

We have now come close upon three men — one in 
the sunny, two in the shadowy, part of the La Fayette 
story — who might well have been put into fiction by 
Dumas or Balzac, or any of the masters : the Comte 
de Broglie (pronounced Bro-ille), the Baron de Kalb 
and M. de Beaumarchais. It is a duty on our part 
to take a look at each, as La Fayette did on many an 
occasion, since each had much to do with the multiple 
data out of which we must pluck such truth as may be 
within reach. Frederick Kapp (biographer of Baron de 

^ " Portraits Litteraires," tome ii, p. 388. 
56 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

Kalb), says Comte Charles Francois de Broglie's elder 
brother, Marechal Victor Francois de Broglie (1718- 
1804) was one of the ablest captains of the day. Jomini 
called him " the only French general engaged in the 
Seven Years' War who approved himself as capable 
on all occasions." Comte Charles (1719-1781), an 
habitue of the Prince of Conti's salon, intriguer and 
secret agent for Louis XV, and a great " frondeur," a 
great " grumbler," had the ill-luck to become the scape- 
goat of d'Eon's villainy. " Hence he suffered from the 
worst wound that can be inflicted upon a Frenchman — 
that of ridicule." The Court turned him out of doors ; 
and he and the Marechal quit Paris to weed their flower- 
beds at the Chateau de Ruffec. Later Choiseul recalled 
them and the Marechal became " Governor of the three 
bishoprics at j\Ietz, Toul and Verdun.'' But it was 
Charles Frangois who was military governor of Metz 
at the time of the dinner and it was Charles who now 
figured in a notable bid for Franco-American service. 
Bancroft ^ astonished his sober readers of an earlier 
generation by this unexplained passage : 

*' The Comte de Broglie, disclaiming the ambition 
of becoming the sovereign of the United States, insin- 
uated his willingness to be for a period of years its 
William of Orange, provided he could be assured of a 
large grant of money before embarkation, an ample 
revenue, the highest military rank, the direction of 
foreign relations during his command and a princely 
annuity for life after his return." 

The New World was not exactly his oyster, but he 
would open it if he could have the pearl inside. Like 
William of Orange, he would serve as a stadtholder, 
which word. Dr. Charles J. Stille" says, had the same 

""History of the United States," vol. vi, p. 519 (edition 
of 1879). 

'See Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 
vol. xi, No. 4, pp. 369 et seq. Also " Le Stadthouderat de Comte 
de Broglie," in Ai. Doniol's " La Participation," ii, 50. 

57 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

meaning then as Protector or Dictator now. The 
Count's naive proposition was made in dead earnest 
to none other than Silas Deane for transmission to 
Congress. Let us mark well that our would-be savior 
and stadtholder was the same versatile genius who had 
now brought La Fayette in touch with Baron de Kalb. 

The Baron was a self-made baron, as well as a 
safe-made man. He had a reason for pirating a title. 
Born plain Johan Kalb (of peasant stock, June 29, 
1 721 ; died the hero of the battle of Camden, August 
16, 1780) he could not have become a French brigadier 
if he had not assumed to be a noble. It was one of the 
follies of old France that to be an officer one must have 
at least four lineal aristocratic ancestors, or a hundred 
continuous years of blue blood. Kalb acquired soldier- 
ship during the war of the Austrian succession in the 
" regiment Loewendal " under Marechal Saxe. After 
the Seven Years' War, " in which a million men per- 
ished," Choiseul sent him, with other secret agents, 
to Canada and the colonies. Disguised and often 
using his mother tongue, this brave, energetic and 
vivacious man seemed hardly fifty, when he died. 

As for M. de Beaumarchais ^ (i 732-1 799) he cer- 
tainly was an odd one. He was a watchmaker's son, 
like Rousseau. His father was a character; his five 
sisters were cultivated, witty, musical. One, Lizette, 
was the original heroine in Goethe's " Clavijo." *' Beau- 
marchais," the name of a maternal relative, was only 
a " nom de guerre ; " for in reality he was Pierre 
Augustin Caron. He looked after the timepieces of 
Mesdames in the King's household — Logue, Graille 
and Chiife, as Louis XV nicknamed his three daughters. 

' Beaumarchais and " The Lost Million," by Charles J. 
Stille, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 
vol. xi. Also " Beaumarchais and the War for American Inde- 
pendence," by Elizabeth S. Kite. 

58 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

But for the intimate footing thus acquired by Beau- 
marchais, his satire on the ancien regime, " Le Mariage 
de Figaro," might not have been tolerated.® Dr. 
Stille scores an important point with respect to him. 
" Vain, ever active, unscrupulous," he strikes many 
students of character as unworthy ; but " by others he 
is thought chiefly responsible for two Revolutions — 
that of France, by holding up in the full light of day 
before the average Frenchman monstrous evils which 
had never before been so vividly portrayed, and that 
of America by the energy which he exhibited in sup- 
plying us with arms and clothing for an army of 25,000 
men, supplies which we must admit were essential to 
our success against Great Britain." In a word, he 
was a wonder whom we must admire circumspectly, 
cautiously. Never was a son of Adam so versatile.^® 
Not only was his head as full of projects as his own 
watch of wheels, but his mental machinery rarely ran 
down. " This extraordinary man dipped into every- 
thing; he was indeed a jack of all trades. He almost 
succeeded in everything, so prodigious were his abili- 



* In the opinion of Talne : " It was necessary for the pro- 
moters of the (French) Revolution to enforce the doctrine of 
the philosophers with brilliancy, with wit and with a certain 
gayety of style and manner which would create public scandal. 
This Beaumarchais did in ' Le Mariage de Figaro.' He exhib- 
ited a faithful picture of the ancien regime before the chiefs 
of the ancien regime. 

" His biographer, Louis de Lomenie, broke into a dusty, 
cobwebby garret in Paris where Beaumarchais' papers had 
been hidden for years. He discovered the original MSS. of the 
" Mariage de Figaro," " The Barber of Seville," and less 
known dramatic pieces. But of the " Lost Million " he found 
no trace. M. Lomenie says that his hero was not only a 
watchmaker, dramatist and songwriter, but comic writer, man 
of fashion, courtier, man of business, financier, manufacturer, 
publisher, shipowner, contractor, secret agent, negotiator, 
pamphleteer, orator on certain occasions, a peaceful man of 
taste yet always at^ law, engaging like Figaro in every occupa- 
tion. Beaumarchais was concerned in most of the events great 
or small which preceded the Revolution. 

59 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ties. He tried, however, in vain to be an honest 
man." ^^ That was the real trouble. Yet, " the lost 
million," for which he receipted, did not go into his 
own pocket; but was used to buy powder, shot, uni- 
forms and a hundred needful things for our ragged 
Continentals. This strange Frenchman, who sent ships 
of his own into battle to fight alongside royal men- 
of-war, had a purpose in mystifying the world. France 
was using him in secret to fight her old enemy. Beau- 
marchais took the knocks and the blame, and we got 
the benefit of his labors. Though once rich, he died 
poor ; and, some say, by his own hand. Even in a censor- 
ious world there are excuses enough for Beaumarchais. 
The Comte de Broglie, Baron de Kalb, M. de Beau- 
marchais and our young La Fayette all made it a 
point to see Silas Deane. He was one of the three 
secret commissioners sent by Congress to stir up 
trouble for Great Britain and hurry along aid for 
the hard-pressed colonists. The other two were Dr. 
Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, Richard Henry 
Lee's brother. Deane sailed out of the Delaware, 
March 6, 1776, bound for Bordeaux, but met with 
mishaps and bufTetings at sea, found it necessary to 
masquerade as a " merchant from Bermuda," and 
reached Paris as late as July — unfamiliar alike with 
the language and with the customs of the people among 
whom he had come to play a secret and forbidden game 
for gold and guns and the what-not of a desperate 
struggle. Lee and Franklin came later. Franklin's 
great part in bringing about the final alliance need 
not be dvv'elt upon. His seeming simplicity, his homely 
ways, his pithy utterances, his mellowness, his practi- 
cal democracy throughout a long life, made " Poor 
Richard " the most popular man in France. '' The 
conduct of Franklin was a masterpiece," says Caba- 

"" Revue Retrospective," March 15, 1870. 
60 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

nais. He was for liberty-lovers in Europe the avant- 
coiirrier of the Declaration of Independence. He was 
lionized in all quarters, and he liked it, being shrewd 
enough to see that, with America on everyone's lips, 
the Foreign Office would eventually cease to deny 
open aid. Even the Royalist Vergennes ^~ would by 
and by say : " I hope to live long enough to see England 
humiliated and American independence acknowledged." 
He fell more and more under Franklin's influence. 
France was full of English spies and Versailles was 
obliged to make pretence to Lord Stormont of pre- 
serv^ing a decent neutrality. But the Franklin furore 
continued. '' Everything which the human fancy can 
conceive was named after him, even including a stove ! 
Hats, canes, scarfs a la Franklin, were the mode." 

It follows that Deane and Lee were in the great 
Doctor's shadow. It is out of place here to retell the 
sad tale of these two — Lee and Deane — for they got 
themselves into all sorts of trouble. Lee was a trouble- 
maker — suspicious, jealous and with an itch for writing 
letters of complaint and abuse. That he was a hard 
man, an unmellowed man, might well have been for- 
tunate for America if he had been less censorious. 
Both Deane and Franklin were unbusinesslike in their 
methods; and each accordingly laid himself open to 
criticism from Lee and from Congress. In Franklin's 
case censure did not matter since he was so great a 
character and grand a patriot; but it did matter in 
Deane's, who upon his return to America, landing 
from a packet with the expectation of plaudits from a 
grateful people, found the hands held out to him cold 
at best, and in some instances doubled as if in menace.^^ 

Whatever may be said against Beaumarchais, the 

'^Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes (b. Dijon, 1717; 
d. Versailles, 1787), foreign affairs minister, July 21, I774; 
identified throughout with the Franco-American Alliance. 

^ " Papers in Relation to the Case of Silas Deane," 1855. 
61 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

fact remains that he sent ship after ship laden with 
priceless impedimenta wherewith was waged our War 
for Liberty. 

Whatever may be said to the detriment of Silas 
Deane, the fact remains that he worked hard and long 
and well. Lee meanwhile was making enemies, and 
Franklin friends. Moreover, Deane was first on the 
ground in France. To him came the hundreds who 
wished to find employment oversea — adventurers, 
money-hunters and those born-soldiers whose instinct 
caused them to flock to a fight, even if they had to 
cross an ocean to do so. " The rage, I may say, for 
entering the American service increases," wrote Deane 
to Congress ; *' and the consequence is that I am 
crowded with offers and proposals, many of them from 
persons of the first rank and eminence, in the sea as 
well as land service.^* 

In " The French in America," Thomas Balch gives 
us a well-wrought " Who's Who's " of these friends 
of ours in our time of need. One has but to compare 
young La Fayette with the. common run of them to see 
how much more idealistic were his generosities than 
theirs. Whatever La Fayette may have been later in 
life — and, in course of time, we shall find his motives 
impugned — the mainspring of his action was one of 
the pure gold of golden youth. It was like an out- 
cropping of the Crusader. There was something of 
Guesclin, of Bayard, in him that made him so eager 
to accept responsibilities of a great leap in the dark — 
a great adventure overseas among an alien people. 

But we shall not belittle or decry Deane's soldiers 
of fortune. No doubt there were many among them 
whose motives were excellent, however mixed. Cer- 
tainly one cannot quite subscribe to the sweeping con- 
clusion of Dr. Charles J. Stille when he says : 

"Wharton, "Diplomatic Correspondence/' ii, 191. 
62 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

" It is possible to overrate the disinterestedness of 
France in regard to the succors furnished by her dur- 
ing the Revolution. There was (and let it never be 
forgotten) but one disinterested Frenchman who served 
during that war, and that was the Marquis de La Fay- 
ette. He made the American cause his own because he 
believed it to be that of liberty and human rights. He 
fought for us not because he hated England as an enemy 
to France, but because he was moved by the sarne 
principle which governed George Washington and his 
companions. He, above all the foreigners in our army, 
clamored for no recognition of his services and asked 
for no pay. The conduct of La Fayette had many 
admirers among his countrymen, but no imitators." 

It is undeniable that La Fayette kept his secret 
better than some of those with whom he has just been 
compared. For him it was a long year of reticence — 
of waiting and planning. He must have talked with 
Beaumarchais and De Kalb and probably on many 
occasions with the Comte de Broglie who wanted 
to wear George Washington's boots and do things in 
a big way. The Comte's stadtholdership seemed all 
the more necessary to him because the latest news 
from America was much more favorable to the British 
than it had been for months past. 

In the October following the Metz episode the 
Comte wrote to Saint^ Germain,^^ minister of war, in 
behalf of de Kalb. In mid-December Saint Germain 
replied : " When you shall have returned here, M. le 
Comte, we shall see what disposition may be made 
of M. de Kalb." The Comte de Broglie reached Ver- 
sailles early in 1776, only to learn that if Kalb should 
be made a brigadier it would attract too much atten- 
tion. Almost every move was made under cover. 
If an act were open it was purposely put above-board 

"Claude Louis, Comte de Saint Germain (1707-1778). 
Under Marechal Saxe he introduced reforms into liie French 
army. 

63 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

with the idea of misleading those on the other side. 
Red herrings, as the phrase goes, were drawn across 
trails. England knew that France was working against 
her, but affected to ignore the veiled hostilities. Secret 
machinations were less to be dreaded than loud-speak- 
ing cannon on land and sea. France was aware of 
England's untrustfulness, and at the same time under- 
stood that she could go a long ways with her plots 
before England would dare to turn upon her. 

" It is known," says Kapp in his " Life of Kalb," 
"that the year 1776 was occupied with covert diplo- 
macy of the French ministry for and with American 
insurgents ; in secretly supporting and openly repudiat- 
ing them ; in steps looking to a more open policy, and 
in sudden relapses and tergiversations." 

There was this consideration : War by France in 
behalf of America would involve immense expenditure. 
Where was the money? What magic bush would bear 
it? The Court, the Nobles, the Clergy were eating 
up everything. Turgot for his part had no plan for 
raising the necessary revenue. War with England 
at a time when England was beset was tempting — yes, 
truly; but it was a luxury too expensive even for 
France; shorn of glory though she was by her loss 
of Canada, and eager to restore her prestige as a 
colonial power. In this manner the ministry, now off, 
now on, kept Kalb, La Fayette and many another in 
vexatious uncertainty as to how they might best work 
out their plans. But the world was revolving; things 
were moving; there were bursts of sunlight, however 
black the menace. Seven days before Congress adopted 
the Declaration of Independence, Spain secretly sent 
a million francs to the American fund and Beaumar- 
chais as secretly spent it. Vergennes saw his way in 
an important, if surreptitious, matter. He employed 
Adjutant-General Colonel du Coudray to visit Metz 

64 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

and six other fortified places to arrange for the ship- 
ment of cannon. That was in September. Much as 
Lord Stormont ^*^ knew, there was much more that he 
did not know; and, therefore, did not thunder about. 
On the 6th day of November, Kalb received a commis- 
sion as " brigadier-general for the islands " — that is, 
the French Antilles. Next day, Deane accepted his 
services as a Major-General. Fifteen other officers 
were to go along under a contract signed on Decem- 
ber 1st. On the 7th, La Fayette is thought to have 
signed. ^^ La Fayette says : " In presenting my nine- 
teen-year-old face to Mr. Deane, I spoke more of 
my zeal than my experience ; though I tried to make as 
much as I could out of the small excitement that my 
going away was likely to cause." Kalb left Paris 
for Havre intending to sail by a Deane ship, la Seine, 
for St. Domingo, General du Coudray boarded 
another Deane ship, the Amp it rite, and put to sea, but 
returned. Finally du Coudray got off, February 14, 
1777. Kalb was less lucky. The Comte de Broglie's 

""I am very credibly informed a Mons. Colbe (Kalk), a 
Swiss officer formerly in this service, who married a daughter 
of the famous van Robais (Anne Elizabeth Emilie van Robais, 
daughter of M. Peter van Robais, cloth manufacturer at Abbe- 
ville), was sent to Fontainbleau and stayed there some days. 
It was proposed to him that if he would go to St. Domingo and 
thence to North America he should have the rank of brigadier 
and nine or ten thousand livres a year during his time of being 
employed." — Lord Stormont to Lord Viscount Weymouth, 
Dec. 4, 1776. 

" But Charlemagne Tower is uncertain as to this. The 
arrangement between La Fayette and Deane was not closed until 
February, 1777. M. Doniol suggests that the selection of an 
earlier date was made at the instance of Mr. Deane, he having 
assumed the responsibility of engaging these foreign officers 
whilst he was sole representative in France of the American 
Congress, and that Deane acting by himself carried back the 
date of contract to a time prior to that at which he learned of 
the arrival of Franklin (December 18, 1776), because this 
arrival modified his official capacity, for he executed it as 
" Deputy of America States General." See the " Marquis de 
La Fayette in the American Revolution," and 'La Participa- 
tion de la France," ii, 380. 

5 65 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

secretary, Dubois-Martin, kept him informed of secret 
proceedings in Paris. The Comte, still thinking in 
terms of the princely politics of Europe, hoped Kalb 
would soon reach Philadelphia and push the stadt- 
holder project. Dubois-Martin added: 

. . . " The Marquis de La Fayette has con- 
versed with me for at least three hours at two sittings. 
. . . La Fayette has probably told you that the 
due d'Ayen (his father-in-law) has written, or intended 
to write, to M. de Maurepas. The answer of the 
minister was to the effect that he knew nothing of the 
entry of French officers into the service of the English 
colonies, that such a step would be an act of hostility 
which his Majesty would be far from sanctioning; that 
the King was much gratified with the evidence of the 
Zeal of the Vicomte de Noailles (La Fayette's brother- 
in-law) but that he must not think of going to America. 
Our young Marquis (de La Fayette) does not despair; 
he still has the greatest desire to go; and is on the 
point of writing to Ruffec (the Comte de Broglie's 
country-seat) for advice and information. He is satis- 
fied with sending his letter by mail, which will give 
him leisure for reflection, and the count sufficient 
time for information. I do not know what will be 
La Fayette's final resolution. M. de Noailles, having 
renounced his own designs, will probably endeavor 
to dissuade the Marquis from adhering to his, in which 
attempt he will of course be seconded by his family. 
The Marquis de La Fayette ... is a most splen- 
did young man and sincerely devoted to you." ^^ 

There is much more of this; for Dubois-Martin 
was full of Paris and Rufifec gossip; and evidently 
taken with the liberty-struck youth who could talk 
to him so long and fascinatingly on the great enterprise. 
Dubois-Martin, be it said, had a brother with Kalb — 
Lieutenant Francois Auguste Dubois-Martin, lately 
arrived on leave from his regiment at Port au-Prince — 
whom de Broglie called *' little Dubois." 

" " Life of Kalb," by Frederick Kapp. 
66 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

And now back from Havre came Kalb, *' little 
Dubois " and the other voyagers. There had been 
indiscretions at Havre — wineshop noise, street swag- 
gering, what-not. " Even Beaumarchais, who had 
hastened to Havre, under the assumed name of Durand, 
to superintend the embarkation, lapsing from his great 
mercantile role into the weaknesses of the literary 
man, could not deny himself the satisfaction of having 
his comedies performed during his presence at Havre, 
and even attending rehearsals." 

In consequence, Lord Stormont was stirred into 
protestations; and a long-range ministerial veto from 
Versailles fell like a cannon-ball among the ships. 

" Of all Kalb's friends and companions," says Kapp, 
'' none had more ardently sustained the expedition to 
America than La Fayette. He, too, found his cher- 
ished hopes and aspirations blasted by the prohibitory 
order of the French Government, yet he clung to his 
design, and staked everything upon its execution. The 
first call made by him in company with Kalb, who had 
returned in the meantime, was to the Comte de Broglie 
at Ruffec, and his private secretary Dubois-Martin. 
Both agreed that the voyage to America must be made 
in spite of all obstacles, urged that it be immediately 
undertaken, and discussed with Kalb and La Fayette 
the measures required to promote the common enter- 
prise. The result of these transactions, which occupied 
but a few days, was, that La Fayette resolved to pur- 
chase and freight a ship, and to embark upon it at 
once for America, with Kalb and his other friends." 

But this conclusion was reached in whispers, so to 
say. Spies were thicker than ever. All the walls 
seemed to be developing ears. Moreover, Deane hit 
upon this dark hour of all others to beckon them back. 
Affairs in America were unpromising, to say the least. 
He felt it his duty to warn them of possible disaster. 

67 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

La Fayette said to him : " Heretofore I have been 
able to show you my wilHngness to aid you in your 
struggle ; the time has now come when that wilHngness 
may be put to an effective use, for I am going to buy 
a ship and take your officers out in it. Let us not give 
up our hope yet ; it is precisely in time of danger that 
I want to share whatever fortune may have in store 
for you." 

How to go about the enterprise was now the only 
question. As for Havre, that exit was closed. So 
" little Dubois," who might well be thought on the 
way back to Port au Prince, was dispatched to Bor- 
deaux. At that place he bought for La Fayette, of the 
firm of Recules de Basmavines, Raimbaux et Cie, 
a vessel, named La Victoire, Captain Le Boursier. The 
cargo was included. The price was 1 12,000 francs ; one- 
fourth cash, the balance fifteen months from day of 
delivery, in the middle of March. 

While "Little Dubois" Martin was buying La Vic- 
toire, La Fayette accompanied his uncle, the Marquis 
de Noailles, French Ambassador at the Court of St. 
James, to London. It was Daniel in the Lion's Den. 
La Fayette's critics say he should not have gone. In 
the light of what he subsequently did, they think he 
should not have broken bread and eaten salt so near 
the throne. 

La Fayette himself says : ^^ 

" I could not refuse to go without risking the dis- 
covery of my secret, and by consenting to take the 
journey I knew I could better conceal my prepara- 
tions for a greater one. This last measure was always 
thought most expedient by MM. Franklin and Deane, 
for the doctor himself was then in France ; and although 
I did not venture to go to his home, for fear of being 

" " Memoirs Written by Myself." He told Jared Sparks 
that the Marquis de Noailles knew nothing of his plans. He 
was careful not to compromise his uncle. 

68 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

seen, I corresponded with him through Mr. Carmichael, 
an American less generally known. I arrived in Lon- 
don with M. de Poix; and I first paid my respects to 
Bancroft, the American, and afterwards to his British 
Majesty. A youth of nineteen may be, perhaps, too 
fond of playing a trick upon the King he is going to 
fight with — of dancing at the home of Lord Germain, 
minister for the English Colonies, and at the home of 
Lord Rawdon, who had just returned from New York 
— and of seeing at the opera that Clinton whom he 
was afterwards to meet at Monmouth. But whilst I 
concealed my intentions, I openly avowed my senti- 
ments ; I often defended the Americans ; I rejoiced at 
their success at Trenton ; and my spirit of opposition 
obtained for me an invitation to breakfast with Lord 
Shelbourne. I refused the offers made me to visit 
the seaports, the vessels fitting out against the rebels, 
and everything that might be construed into an abuse 
of confidence. At the end of three weeks when it 
became necessary for me to return home, while refus- 
ing my uncle, the Ambassador, to accompany him to 
Court, I confided him my strong desire to take a trip 
to Paris. He proposed saying that I was ill during 
my absence. I should not have made use of this 
stratagem myself, but I did not object to his doing so." 

One of La Fayette's well-remembered experiences 
was his presentation to George HL In after-time he 
must have recounted his impression for the delectation 
of that other George among the snowy hills of Valley 
Forge. Even his harshest critics acknowledge that his 
conduct throughout was that of an honorable man. 
Without overstepping the allowable bounds set for 
himself, there was plenty to interest him in London — 
the London of Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale,^*^ David 

^'^ These two, with Mr. Thrale, had visited Paris together in 
the autumn of 1775. The Doctor was not so near-sighted that 
he failed to see a thousand things — trifling books in a lady's 
closet, at which he shook his head ; showy books, but of wood ! 
"Versailles a Mean Town"; "The King"; Sans-terre the 
brewer, with whom Thrale, also a brewer, hobnobbed, un- 
aware that Sans-terre would lead Louis to the scaffold. The 

69 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fanny Burney ; old 
Greneral Oglethorpe, who could have talked with him 
about Georgia; Wilkes and Barre, and multitudes of 
others. 

It was from London that La Fayette on March 9, 
1777, addressed a letter to the due d'Ayen, in which he 
announced his plan : 

" You will be astonished, my dear father, at the 
news I am on the point of giving you; it has cost me 
far more than I can express not to consult you. My 
respect and affection for you, as well as my great 
confidence in you, must convince you of the truth of 
this assertion ; but my word was given, and you would 
not have esteemed me if I had broken it ; the step I am 
now taking will at least prove to you, I hope, the good- 
ness of my intentions. I have found a particular 
opportunity of distinguishing myself, and of learning 
a soldier's trade. I am a general officer in the Army 
of the United States. The frankness of my conduct 
and my zeal in their service have completely won their 
confidence. I have done on my side all I could do for 
them, and their interests will ever be dearer to me than 
my own. In short, my dear father, I am at this moment 
in London anxiously awaiting letters from my friends; 
upon receiving them I shall set ofif from hence, and, 
without stopping at Paris, I shall embark in a vessel 
that I have myself purchased and chartered. My 
travelling companions are the Baron de Kalb, a very 
distinguished officer, brigadier in the King's service 
and Major General, as well as myself in the United 
States Army, and some other excellent officers who 
have kindly consented to share the chances of my fate. 
I am rejoiced at having found such a glorious opportu- 
nity of occupying myself and acquiring knowledge. I 
am conscious that I am making an immense sacrifice, 
and that to quit my family, my friends and you, my 
dearest father, costs me more than it could do any 

glory and the wonder and the seamy side all appear in the 
Doctor's journal. Boswell regrets that Johnson did not write 
his "Travels in France" as the Doctor could write the "Life 
of a Broomstick." 

70 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

other person, because I love you all far more than 
any other person ever loved his friends. But this 
voyage will not be a very long one; we see every day 
far longer journeys taken for amusement only, and I 
hope also to return more worthy of all those who are 
kind enough to regret my absence. Adieu, my dear 
father, I hope I shall soon see you again. Retain your 
affection for me — I ardently desire to merit it — nay, I 
do merit it already from my warm affection toward 
you, and from the respect that, during the remainder 
of his life, will be felt for you by 

Your affectionate son, 

La Fayette." 

How this news was received at the Hotel de Noailles 
is best told by Madame de La Fayette : 

*' I loved him tenderly. On hearing the news my 
father and all the family fell into a state of violent 
anger. My mother, dreading these emotions for me 
on account of the state of health I was in, alarmed 
at the dangers her dearly beloved son had gone to seek 
so far, having herself less than anybody in the world 
the thirst for ambition and of worldly glory, or a taste 
for enterprise, appreciated, nevertheless, M. de La 
Fayette's conduct as it was two years later appreciated 
by the rest of the world. Totally casting aside all care 
with regard to the immense expense of such an enter- 
prise, she found from the first moment, in the manner 
in which it had been prepared, a motive for distinguish- 
ing it from what is termed ' une folic de jeune homme' 
His sorrow on leaving his wife and those who were dear 
to him convinced her that she need not fear for the 
happiness of my life, save in proportion to her fears for 
his. It was she who gave me the cruel news of his 
departure, and, with generous tenderness which was 
peculiar to her, she tried to comfort me by finding the 
means of serving La Fayette." 

" La Fayette," says one, " has everything to keep 
him in France : -^ his position, a wife by whom he was 

^^ " La Fayette as a man stands foremost of his day. He 
was an exemplary husband, of an affectionate nature; but he 

71 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

passionately loved, a child " — for Madame de La Fay- 
ette's first born, Henriette, namesake of Madame 
d'Ayen, had come upon the scene ten days before Christ- 
mas in the preceding year. He was never to see 
Henriette again, for she died October, 1777. 

" In Paris," says Rosenthal,-- the bold step of 
La Fayette in espousing the American cause was gener- 
ally admired, his wife was congratulated on having such 
a husband, and in the theatres any lines capable of being 
interpreted as referring to him were vehemently 
applauded." The Chevalier de Marais wrote to his 
aged mother at her chateau in Normandy : '' People 
here are greatly excited about the adventure of a young 
man of the Court, son-in-law of Noailles, possessor of 
a pretty wife, two children, fifty thousand crowns a 
year, of everything in fact that can make life here 
agreeable and desirable. He has left all that since 
eight days in order to join the insurgents. His name 
is M. de La Fayette." The Marquise replied: "What 
new kind of folly, my dear child, is this of which you 
tell me ? What ! Does the fierce spirit of knight- 
errantry still exist, and has it still its partisans ! Go 
and aid the insurgents ! Well ! I am delighted to see 
that you reassure me, for I should tremble for your 
safety, were it not for your confession that you consider 
M. de La Fayette a madman." 

The man who was mad, in another sense, was the 
due d'Ayen. Of course. La Fayette's London letter 
was not posted until the writer had disappeared in the 
direction of Bordeaux. He did not visit the Hotel de 
Noailles, but '' lay concealed " for three days with Kalb 

was primarily a patriot and one utterly uncorruptible. He loved 
his country before all other considerations ; before his country 
he loved liberty, but this very love made him selfish. . . . He was 
mad to go." — " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," by M. 
MacDermot Crawford. 

^^ " France and America," by Lewis Rosenthal. 
72 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

at Chaillot, then in the suburbs, though now a part 
of Paris, " between the Seine and the Elysian fields." 
" On the evening of the i6th (of March)," says Kapp, 
" Kalb and La Fayette took post for Bordeaux, and 
arrived there after three days' journey." 

We have seen how Madame d'Ayen took the blow — 
making the best of it, sensible woman that she was — 
but the due d'Ayen hurried off to the Comte de Ver- 
gennes and procured a lettre-de-cachet. La Fayette 
was forbidden to go to America. He was to " repair 
to Toulon, there to expect the arrival of the due 
d'Ayen, and of the Comtesse de Tesse, his sister, and 
to travel with them to Italy. 

Apparently the due d'Ayen was in deep chagrin; 
and, at the first flush, determined to thwart his son- 
in-law ; but, as time passed, he cooled and soon ceased 
to vapor. Perhaps ridicule made him wince and with- 
draw behind the curtains of the Hotel de Noailles. "If 
the due d'Ayen," said a lady, " will thwart such a 
son-in-law in such a project, he cannot expect to marry 
his other daughters." 

But, though the solicitous father-in-law was dis- 
tressed, Kalb's biographer doubts the sincerity of Ver- 
sailles in the matter of La Fayette's apprehension. 
Deep were the games and ingenious the devices of the 
Foreign Office. For instance, after the La Fayette 
affair had been bruited in London, the Comte de 
Banklay, Marechal de Camp in the French Army, 
arrived in London with an offer to serve in the British 
Army against the Americans. This might, or might 
not, have been a prearranged offset to La Fayette's 
move. At any rate, the services of the Comte de 
Banklay w^ere politely declined. " It is with great 
regret, M. de le Marquis," wrote the Comte de Ver- 
gennes to M. de Noailles in London, '' that I mention 
to you M. de Marquis de La Fayette. His age may 

73 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

perhaps justify his escapade; but I am truly sorry, 
not only for the interest that you and the due d'Ayen 
have in the matter, but also because I am afraid he may 
fall in with some English man-of-war, and, not being 
distinguished from the mass of adventurers who come 
into their hands, may be treated with harshness, not 
entirely unknown to that nation." Here was truly 
philosophical solicitude worthy of Franklin's new- 
found friend. Manifestly the Comte de Vergennes was 
not displeased. Kapp declares that the efforts of the 
French Government to intercept La Fayette were a 
pretense. What he and the Marquis were doing was 
a " public secret." The ministers, instead of opposing, 
connived at the journey of Kalb and La Fayette, as far 
as their position allowed them to do so. La Fayette 
says as much himself, when, in the year 1800, he 
writes to Madame Geymueller, the daughter of his 
friend: "His (De Kalb's) departure was favored by 
the Comte de Broglie and secretly sanctioned by the 
French Government. What is true of Kalb must apply 
to La Fayette, for they traveled together.'' 

Such would seem to be the simple truth. La Fay- 
ette must have felt that there would be a quick end 
to the whole business if Vergennes should thrust out 
his long arm — the long and powerful arm of the law, 
with gripping fingers and a merciless stranglehold — 
with the real intent of intercepting and seizing him. 
But so long as Stormont should satisfy himself with 
mere vaporing, Vergennes would continue to play 
into the hands of the enemies of England.-^ What 

^'Vergennes said, April, 1777: "The folly has turned the 
heads of our young men to a degree you would scarcely credit. 
Numerous applications are made to me on this score. Those 
who are absolutely masters of their own actions I answer by 
telling them they can do as they please. Those who ask my 
advice I dissuade from going; those who ask my orders are 
commanded to remain." 

74 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

La Fayette feared was a de Noailles family embargo. 
Powerful, indeed, were the de Noailles interests and 
influences. And what was the meaning of this order 
to proceed to Toulon and Marseilles? He and Kalb 
reached Bordeaux on March 19. Next day, Kalb wrote 
to his wife : *' There is a possibility that our departure 
may be prevented. I find so many matters still to be 
arranged that the minister will receive notice of the 
journey of the Marquis in time for his prohibitory 
order to arrive before we go to sea. Notwithstanding 
the ardor with which we are at. work, nothing is more 
uncertain than this voyage. At this moment a courier 
has been dispatched to ascertain the effect produced 
by the news of our proceedings, and to prevent an 
interdict from issuing." One obstacle was removed 
two days later. " By the laws of France at that time," 
says Tower, " it was necessary for every passenger 
to obtain, a certificate, signed by the proper official, 
setting forth the place of his birth, his age, his general 
appearance, and his destination." M. Doniol found 
the La Fayette-Kalb permits in the files of the Tri- 
bunals de Commerce at Bordeaux. In La Fayette's 
paper dated "Bordeaux the 226. of March, 1777,'' he 
figures as '' Sr Gilbert du Mottle, Chevalier de Chavail- 
lac, age de 20 ans, taille, haute, cheveux blond/' 

Let not such minutiae as the item just set forth be 
looked upon as unnecessary. One would much prefer 
to assume that La Fayette quit France at the risk of 
his lordly neck, and at the further risk of confiscation 
and impoverishment ; for, then, we should have only the 
thrills — the thrills of surreptitious preparation in the 
wine shops of Paris amid dark-browed, double-dyed 
heroes, of stealth and elusiveness in transporting men 
and material to Bordeaux, and, finally, of the dash 
to sea just as the King's minions arrived with gnashing 
teeth and the very rope wherewith to hang our dramatis 

75 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

pcrsonncc. Details such as we feel obliged to give clog 
the quick flow, but they enable us to see La Fayette 
as he was — imperfections and all. We think of him 
as impetuous ; yet here now we not only perceive in 
him the quality of caution but something that smacks 
of overcaution. We find that, in our little Odyssey, 
there appears a young man who in a perceptible degree 
patterns after the ancient prototype of so many adven- 
turers. Kalb did not relish the delays ; he did not 
like the overcaution ; he wanted to get on with the 
great world-trip, seeing that he had so far to go and 
so much to do. On March 23 he wrote to his wife : 
" We are still ignorant whether our departure will not 
be prevented, as our vessel, so long detained already, 
cannot go out into the stream before to-morrow. When 
the wind will turn God only knows." Another day 
passed and another; and on the night of the 25th the 
impatient voyagers boarded La Victoire and dropped 
down the Garonne. " In two hours we shall be in the 
open sea," wrote Kalb. *' We are weighing anchor in 
the most glorious weather. I shall certainly write you 
again before my arrival in America, because we have 
yet to enter a European port, and shall probably 
wait at St. Sebastian for the return of a courier sent 
to Paris." " Accordingly," adds Kapp, '* the Victoire 
first took a southerly course to Los Pasajes, a little 
port in the bay of St. Sebastian, Spain, and arrived 
there on the 28th of March." 

But though those were not the days of long-distance 
telephones and wireless messages, they were the days 
of swift-riding couriers. One of these couriers reached 
Los Pasajes in time to convey to La Fayette the *' orders 
of the Court commanding the Marquis to repair to 
Toulon ; " and Kalb's heart sank. " He was joined at 
Bordeaux," says Tower, '* by a young French officer, 
a friend of his, the Vicomte de Maiiroy, who had also 

76 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

obtained an appointment from Mr. Deane; and in 
company with him he started in a post-chaise to return 
to Los Pasajes, having written to the M. de Maurepas 
that, as the Government had not absolutely refused to 
remove its interdict, he should accept its silence, as 
consent — a * plaisanterie ' to which he referred in after 
years with a smile. He had told the commandant 
at Bordeaux that he should go to Marseilles, in com- 
pliance with the King's order, but as soon as he and his 
companion had got safely out of town, they changed 
their course and turned their faces toward St. Sebas- 
tian. Whilst Vicomte de Mauroy sat in the chaise. 
La Fayette disguised himself in the costume of a post- 
boy and went ahead on horseback. Everything pros- 
pered with them on their journey until they came to 
St.-Jean-de-Luz, where the daughter of an innkeeper 
at whose house they stopped recognized the pretended 
post-boy as the gentleman she had seen, only a few 
days before, travelling toward Bordeaux ; and a sudden 
exclamation from her, which was only half -suppressed 
at a sign from La Fayette, came very near exposing, 
him. Some officials who had been following him came 
up soon after, but, the girl having sent them in the 
wrong direction. La Fayette and M. de Mauroy were 
enabled to continue their journey to Los Pasajes, where 
they arrived safely on the 17th of April." 

All this v^hile Kalb w^as in ill humor. Sure enough 
the Marquis had toyed with fate and let his family 
catch him. " This," Kalb wrote, " is the end of his 
expedition to America to join the army of the insur- 
gents. He is at this moment (April i) leaving for 
Bordeaux, whence, if possible, he will proceed to Paris, 
being loath to go to Italy. I am now obliged to wait 
for the courier whom La Fayette is to send me, either 
from Bordeaux, if, on obtaining from the commandant 

77 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

of that place more satisfactory information of the 
King's commands he finds it necessary to abandon the 
journey, or from Paris, if he is permitted to go there, 
and then fails in securing the consent of the due 
d'Ayen to his proceeding. Time will hang heavy on 
my hands here in the meantime. I do not believe he 
will be able to rejoin me, and have advised him to 
compromise with the owner of the ship at a sacrifice 
of twenty-five thousand francs." Writing on the 6th 
of April, he added : " If the Marquis has not already got 
a bargain with the ship's owner his blunders will cost 
him dear. I call them blunders, for his course was 
silly from the moment he could not make up his mind 
to quietly execute his project, undisturbed by threats. 
. . . But if it be said that he has done a foolish 
thing, it may be answered that he acted from the most 
honorable motives, and that he can hold up his head 
before all high-minded men." 

Let it be noted that they had entered Spain. 
La Fayette, once out of France, was out of the reach 
of the due d'Ayen, and could have sailed straight away 
for the United States. But he was unwilling to go 
filibustering across the seas, or do any other dishonor- 
able thing. At Bordeaux, by means of couriers, he 
communicated with his friends and relatives in Paris 
and finally gained the day. Kalb wrote, jubilantly, 
April 17: *' At this moment the Marquis has arrived, 
and prepared to set out with us in a day or two. 
He came to this conclusion by receiving assurances 
from everyone in Paris that none other than the due 
d'Ayen had procured the royal order, that all the world 
is in favor of La Fayette's enterprise and sorely dis- 
satisfied with his father-in-law for having obstructed 
his course, and that finally, the ministers on being 
asked their real sentiments in the matter, had answered 
that they would have said nothing at all but for the 

78 



FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 

complaints of the due d'Ayen. We have therefore 
resolved to steer for our destined port." 

Accordingly, on Sunday, April 20, the Victoire put 
to sea. The Vicomte de Mauroy (a Deane Major- 
General) was on board, as were Colonel de Lesser, 
Colonel de Valfort, Lieutenant-Colonel de FayoUes, 
Lieutenant-Colonel de Franval, Major du Buysson, 
Major de Gimat, Major Dubois-Martin, Captain de 
Voigny, Captain de Bedaulx, Captain de la Colombe, 
Captain Captaine, Lieutenant Candon *' and the Ameri- 
can Brice who had joined the cortage at Deane's 
recommendation and who is praised by Kalb as an excel- 
lent and amiable young man." -* 

It is noted by Charlemagne Tower that the diffi- 
culties which La Fayette encountered in carrying out 
his undertaking " served only to intensify his efforts. 
The storm of opposition from his family, the threat- 
ened penalties of disobedience to the King, the separa- 
tion from those he loved, the grief of his young wife, 
were all subordinated to the great purpose of his life, 
his leaving France to help America; a step which his 
angry relatives called a coup de tete, but which was in 
fact an act of chivalry." 

Let us bear in mind that La Fayette's own endeavor 
was apart from the astonishing intrigues and proposals 
involving stadtholderships, private navies, lost millions, 
and the like. His was a plain plan — Quixotic, if you 
please, " a Fool's own," as his father-in-law thought, 
nevertheless a plain plan to be wrought out and executed 
with all secrecy. It presupposes that the youth who 

^* Of these officers, Price, Brice, or Brue, served as aide 
under La Fayette; was made brevet Lieut.-Colonel, Oct. 27, 
1778; had a horse killed under him at Gloucester. Chevalier 
de la Colombe was recommended by La Fayette for a brevet of 
Major; was a prisoner with La Fayette at Olmutz ; when re- 
leased made his way to Philadelphia. De Valfort, as director 
of the military school at Brienne, became " the principal in- 
structor of Napoleon Bonaparte." 

79 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

undertook it was of no small mould — a man of large 
conception, of imagination, of " high emprise." That 
he should have gone into it when his blood was up is 
easily understandable ; but to persevere in it, when 
influential relatives antagonized every step presupposes 
resoluteness, an indomitable something quite in keeping 
with the characteristics of the La Fayettes of the olden 
generations. Yes — undoubtedly it presupposes great 
hardihood when a man, especially one who has been 
but twenty years in the world, undertakes a long- 
continued task in the execution of which he is bound 
to sacrifice much money, much time, and maybe his life. 

La Fayette, the champion of liberty, becomes a 
paradox — the paradox of goldbags and blueblood in 
a dissolute Court — a Court of countless intrigues — 
embracing and clinging steadfastly to a pure idea anti- 
thetical to the ideas usual with one of his caste. 

" At this period," writes Robert Wain, Jr.,-^ " La 
Fayette was a noble-looking man, notwithstanding his 
deep red hair. His forehead, though receding, was fine, 
his eye clear hazel and his mouth and chin delicately 
formed, exhibiting beauty rather than strength." And 
again : " The expression of his countenance was 
strongly indicative of a generous and gallant spirit, 
mingled with something of the pride of conscious manli- 
ness — in manners frank and amiable — his movements 
light and graceful." 

" " Life of Marquis de La Fayette," by Robert Wain, Jr., 
who dates his preparatory advertisement, Wain Grove, June, 
1828. 



IV 

CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

From all accounts, the voyage of La Victoire, which 
left Los Pasajes, Sunday, April 20, was as eventful 
as any set of young adventurers could wish. Her log 
had all the elements of a good sea tale. Clarke Russell, 
or Robert Louis Stevenson, if not Cooper or Mayne 
Reid, could have told it entrancingly. As it is, the 
reader must content himself with a matter-of-fact 
narrative — sans sun-sparkle, sans spray — put together 
out of anecdotal fragments and passages from La 
Fayette's own letters. At first there was fair wind 
and smooth sailing. But, romantic though the adven- 
ture was, tedium soon got the better of the thrills. 
Some idea of the way things dragged — of the poor 
food and bad water ; the rolling and pitching, the sea- 
sickness — may be had from La Fayette's letter to his 
wife (a hord de la Victoire, ce jo Mai, 1777). He got 
over his sickness *' sooner than his companions," and, 
as Trevelyan expresses it, " employed the immense leis- 
ure of ocean travel in studying English, and reading 
military books in order to qualify himself for being a 
Major-General — a rank which he regarded as a ' brevet 
of immortality'." 

La Victoire had cleared for the West Indies ; and 
Captain Le Boursier, it seems, had no thought of taking 
any other course. La Fayette, for his part, had no 
idea of going in any other direction than the United 
States. Off the Canaries, he and Captain Le Boursier 
fell at loggerheads. Le Boursier declared that to go 
to the Carolina coast would end in the capture of the 
ship. Halifax would be the fate of all — a dungeon 
there, maybe; or, worse still, a prison-ship. Had not 
6 81 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

La Fayette heard of the British prison-ships? To be 
sure he had ! France could not reclaim them. They 
would be lost eternally. One may imagine the shrewd 
old sailor, walking his decks, and letting the boyish 
Don Quixote have the best he could give him in the 
way of deterrent argument. On the other hand, 
La Fayette brought out these points : He himself 
owned the Victoire — that was something. As for cap- 
ture, unfriendly French warships, as well as hostile 
British frigates, would be hovering about the 
approaches to the West Indies. To go that way would 
force all hands to run a double risk ; and, then, with 
that peril passed, in proceeding from the West Indies to 
the Carolinas, he and his friends would be obliged 
to run another blockade. No, the Captain must divert 
his ship. Otherwise there would be delays, if not fatal 
involvements. Captain Le Boursier demurred. La 
Fayette persisted. He was obliged at last to resort 
to threats. He would put the second officer in com- 
mand, and steer for South Carolina. Then the Captain 
made a clean breast of it. He had smuggled on board 
private stores, worth 40,000 francs, with which he 
intended to speculate upon his arrival in the West 
Indies. That revelation cleared the air. La Fayette 
recouped Le Boursier with 40,000 francs ; and away 
went the ship for Carolinian latitudes. Clarke Russell 
in his " Voyage of a Rich Young Lord " would have 
made La Victoire foam at her prow after this disclosure 
of the canny Captain's dark secret ; but the truth is the 
Victoire was a slow sailer. She took her time ; ploughed 
the blue sea to the Gulf Stream and across it; the 
voyagers grew well acquainted with flying-fish and 
dolphin. Ifc was a wonder that they escaped capture 
as she approached the Carolina coast, where the British 
frigates were cruising. There was on board a Captain 
de Bedaulx, a Dutch officer, who knew that he would 

82 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

be hanged to the yard-arm if caught. So he and 
La Fayette, in view of their " two old cannon and a 
few muskets," agreed to blow up the ship if, after 
a fight, she should be brought to and boarded. One 
day they thrilled to see a privateer. She flew Ameri- 
can colors, which she was obliged to strike to two 
British frigates that by and by bore down upon her. 
Fortunately for La Fayette a strong northerly wind 
favored the Victoire, enabling her to run into Winyah, 
or Georgetown Bay, an estuary of the Pedee River, half 
a degree north of Charleston and fifteen miles from 
Georgetown. Two hamlets on the Winyah shore, Kalb 
and Lagrange, subsequently were named in honor of 
the Baron and the Marquis. Winyah itself was the 
birthplace of General Francis Marion, big enough 
in patriotic history but so small at birth as to fit into a 
quart measure. But there was no settlement at South 
Inlet, the spot where they dropped anchor at two o'clock 
in the afternoon of June 13, fifty-four days out from 
Los Pasajes. La Fayette, Kalb, Chevalier du Buysson 
and another officer listed as " Leonard Price, aged 22, 
native of Sauveterre " (but spoken of by Kalb as 
Brice) started in a yawl, manned by seven men, to find 
a landing place. They finally got into the North Inlet of 
Winyah and close to North Island ; but they knew 
nothing of the channel. Night came on. They seemed 
lost. About ten o'clock they found themselves within 
hail of a gang of black men who were dragging for 
oysters. Kalb alone, it appears, could speak enough 
English to make himself understood. Yes, said the 
spokesman among the negroes, they were not many 
miles from " Massa Ugee's place," the big house on 
the North Island. So after a parley it was agreed that, 
as the tide was at an ebb, the yawl should put back 
to the ship, and that the adventurers should accompany 
the oysterniQn on their return shoreward among the 

83 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

shoals. Thus, in a flat-bottomed, leaky oyster-boat, the 
voyagers were poled up the inlet and put ashore at 
midnight. It was a strange experience — masses of 
dark foliage, brilliant stars, fire-flies innumerable and 
such croakings and sounds as they never before had 
heard. A light came from the bayside mansion. Dogs 
barked at them. There was a commotion within. They 
had been mistaken for marauders landed from some 
British frigate. They were challenged by a voice in 
the dark. Kalb cried out that they were French offi- 
cers just ashore and in search of a pilot to take their 
ship to Charleston. Then it was that the door opened, 
and there, in the well-lighted hall, stood " Massa 
Ugee," otherwise Major Benjamin Huger. He gave 
his visitors a welcome that warmed their hearts. Major 
Huger was a staunch Liberty man. He was one of 
the *' Secret Committee " which, at Charleston, in the 
dead of night, had broken into the King's armory and 
powder-house and seized their contents. He was " a 
gallant gentleman, but of no great fortune," hence 
while the rich Culcheth Golightly had been willing to 
give one of his daughters in marriage to Charles 
Drayton, heir of Magnolia, he refused permission to his 
second daughter to wed Major Huger. This was 
Polly Golightly who, at a ball one night, " caught up 
a hat lying near, stepped through a window into the 
garden and ran off with the man of her choice." ^ 
*' There is a lovely picture of her," says the chronicler 
of the incident, " with her hat (her trousseau) hanging 
on her arm." 

But when La Fayette awoke for the first time in 
America, and heard the outpouring of birdsong in the 
live oaks and magnolias and caught the sweetness of 
the Cherokee rose, it was not to greet Polly Golightly. 

^ " Charleston, the Place and the People," by Mrs. St. 
Julien Ravenel. 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

She was dead, poor soul, and Major Huger had mar- 
ried again. Jared Sparks was curious enough to quiz 
La Fayette as to how he felt when he first set foot 
in the United States. He said he had gone to bed 
happy because he was " beyond the reach of his 
pursuers." The next morning was beautiful. The 
novelty of everything around him, the room, the bed, 
with mosquito-curtains, the black servants who came to 
ascertain his wants, the beauty and strange appearance 
of the country as he saw it from his window, clothed 
in luxuriant verdure, all conspired to produce a magical 
effect, and to impress him with indescribable sensa- 
tions." Major Huger's second wife was Miss Kinloch ; 
and she it was, who, with her little son, Francis Kinloch 
Huger, then three years old, received the of^ficers when 
they came down to breakfast. Their hearts melted 
when with kind voices and hospitable attentions, oj>en, 
free and sincere, the Hugers warmed away the hard- 
ness that had come over them during the stress and 
peril they had but lately undergone. On La Fayette's 
knee, playing with his bright buttons and gold-hilted 
sword, sat little Kinloch, who, when he grew up, was 
to risk his life at Olmutz in La Fayette's behalf. 
Major Benjamin Huger was one of five patriot 
brothers ; General Isaac was with Greene ; John, Secre- 
tary of State in South Carolina ; Daniel, a member of 
the Continental Congress. Francis K. was Quarter- 
master General of the Southern Department. 

Benjamin was all too soon to be a victim of the war. 
During Prevost's invasion in May, 1779, while he was 
helping in the defense of Charleston, Governor Rut- 
ledge sent him out at night to repair a breach in the 
abatis. " The garrison had lighted tar barrels in front 
of their lines to prevent a surprise, and by their light 
Huger and his men were discovered and believed to be 
a party of the enemy. Immediately a fire of cannons, 

85 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

muskets and rifles ran along almost the whole line, 
and poor Huger and twelve of his men were slain." 

So Lossing says ; but now it was a bright June morn- 
ing with much to do at Winyah Bay, and Huger helped 
La Fayette out of his difficulties. Word was sent to 
Captain Le Boursier that, as there was not water enough 
in the bay for the Victoire to make a landing, the right 
thing to do in the event of the enemy's approach would 
be to send everybody ashore and burn the ship. But 
again fate favored La Victoire. Stifif winds drove the 
British warships off the coast ; and she ran into Charles- 
ton harbor, reaching her wharf about the time La Fay- 
ette and Kalb, on horseback, under a scorching sun, 
entered the city. The others walked, and an exhausting 
walk it was. All were received with honors. In a 
letter to Madame de La Fayette (June, 1777) the 
Marquis spoke of Charleston as '' that charming city, 
worthy of its inhabitants," where " everything attested 
the presence of cultivation and ease." Latter-day 
writers of the Trevelyan school lay some stress upon 
the difference between the people of the colonies and 
those of the crowded European countries. In the 
settled parts of America one was struck with the hearti- 
ness, the sincerity, the homespun charm of the people. 
These qualities were in contrast with the lip-politeness 
of the old-world aristocracies, and the dumb disregard, 
or incivility, of the unconsidered commons. Touching 
upon this topic in his letter to his wife. La Fayette 
wrote : 

** A simplicity of manners, a desire to please, the 
love of country and of liberty, and a pleasing equality 
are to be found everywhere among them. The richest 
man and the poorest are upon the same social level, 
and, although there are some great fortunes in this 
country, I defy any one to discover the least difference 
in the bearing of one man to another. I began with life 

86 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

in the country at the home of Major Huger; now I 
an*i here in the city. Everything recalls more or less 
the English customs, though there is more of simplicity 
here than in England. The American women are very 
beautiful, unaffected in manner and of a charming 
neatness, which prevails everywhere in this country 
and receives the greatest attention, much more so even 
than in England. What delights me most is that all 
the citizens are brothers. There are no poor people in 
America, not even what may be called peasants. Every 
man has his own property, and each has the same rights 
with the greatest land-owner in the country. The inns 
are quite different from those in Europe; the pro- 
prietor and his wife sit down with you to the meals 
and do the honors of the table ; and when you leave 
you pay without haggling over your bill. If you 
do not wish to go to an inn, there are country houses 
where anyone w^ho is a good American will be ad- 
mitted and entertained as kindly as w^e receive our 
friends in Europe. 

" As for myself I have been welcomed in the most 
agreeable manner possible by everyone here. I have 
just this moment returned from a grand dinner that 
lasted five hours, given by a gentleman of this city 
in my honor. General Howe (Robert) and General 
Moultrie were there, and several of the officers of my 
caravan. We drank many healths, and spoke very bad 
English, which language, by the way, I am beginning 
now to use a little. To-morrow I shall return my 
visit. I shall take the gentlemen who accompany me 
to call on the Governor and then I shall make my 
preparations to leave." 

Kapp, quoting from Kalb's manuscript, says that, 
by the sale of the Victoire's cargo, La Fayette " was 
handsomely repaid for his risks and outlay." This 
hardly tells the tale. On the contrary. La Fayette 
had a surprise — a shock. Captain Le Boursier produced 
an agreement signed by La Fayette in the haste of his 
departure in which he obligated to send vessel and 
cargo back to Bordeaux, there to be sold. Out of thf 

87 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

proceeds, a note given by La Fayette for 40,000 livres, 
was to be paid ; moreover, there were heavy insurance 
and commission charges to be met at the same time. 
Your Knight of Liberty is prone to overlook counting- 
house stipulations. But now La Fayette and his com- 
rades in adventure were brought up with a round 
turn by the unsuspected clauses in the Bordeaux con- 
tract. All had assumed that they would be supplied 
with necessaries and money by La Fayette, who had 
counted upon his rich cargo to refill his purse. But 
though Debit be a surly and persistent dog. Credit can 
outbark him. It was so now. The Chevalier du Buys- 
son, who in his journal tells of La Fayette's predica- 
ment, reminds us that " all the honors due to a marshal 
of France " were paid to the Marquis in Charleston. 
He readily borrowed $7000 with which " to equip his 
caravan." As for the Victoire, she ran on the bar in 
quitting port ; and that was the last of her. 

It is Major du Buysson who tells of La Fayette's 
Philadelphia expedition, which set out from Charleston 
on June 25, following the northward trail so familiar 
to students of Revolutionary history. Most of the 
officers were to see service either in the Carolinas or 
Virginia, and the journey they were now making 
added considerably to their military value. Kalb was 
to die at Camden. Du Buysson, his aid, was to be of 
great help there. La Fayette himself was made all 
the more capable for his Virginia duties by his famili- 
arity with the southern approaches to his field of 
action. At that time it was a veritable route of romance 
through a primeval region haunted by rangers, by 
Tories or by backwoodsmen. " M. de La Fayette," 
says the Memoires, '' travelled nearly nine hundred 
miles on horseback to present himself to Congress; 
passing through the two Carolinas, Virginia and the 
States of Maryland and Delaware, he reached the 

88 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Capital of Pennsylvania. Whilst he studied the lan- 
guage of the people, he saw also the agriculture and 
products that were entirely new to him ; the vast forests, 
the great rivers, everything, indeed, in this country, 
give to nature an appearance of youth and majesty." 
But let Major du Buysson tell of the trip and its 
troubles, so loftily overlooked by our good knight of 
the blithesome countenance. 

" We divided ourselves into three parties. La Fay- 
ette, the Baron de Kalb, and those of us who came 
ashore with them, hired four carriages to take us and 
our luggage. The aide-de-camp of the Marquis under- 
took to be our guide, although he had no possible idea of 
the country. This was our marching order as we 
came out of Charleston : The procession was headed 
by one of the Marquis's people, in a hussar's uniform. 
The Marquis's carriage was a sort of uncovered sofa 
upon four springs, with a fore-carriage. At the side 
of his carriage he had one of his servants on horseback, 
who acted as his squire. The Baron de Kalb was in 
the same carriage. The two colonels. La Fayette's 
counsellors, followed in a second carriage with two 
wheels. The third was for the aide-de-camp, the 
fourth for the luggage, and the rear was brought up 
by a negro on horseback. 

" Four days later, some of our carriages were 
reduced to splinters ; several of the horses which were 
old and unsteady were either worn out or lame, and 
we were obliged to buy others on the road. This out- 
lay took all our money. We had to leave behind us 
a part of our baggage, and a part of it was stolen. We 
traveled a great part of the way on foot, often sleeping 
in the woods, almost dead with hunger, exhausted by 
the heat, several of us suffering from fever and from 
dysentery." 

This is the way La Fayette wrote to his wife about 
the midsummer march along the old colonial trail, with 
its hot sand, its deep fords, its swampy stretches of mud 
and mire: 

89 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

'* You have probably heard of the beginning of my 
journey and how brilHantly I started out in a carriage? 
I have to inform you that we are now (at Petersburg, 
Va., July 17) on horseback, after having broken the 
wagons in my usual praiseworthy fashion and I expect 
to write to you before long that we have reached our 
destination on foot. There have been some fatigues ; 
but, although a few of my companions have suffered 
from them, I have scarcely noticed them." 

Some of those who suffered what they regarded as 
torments but which to the stoical La Fayette seemed 
no more than *' fatigues," stopped at Annapolis. The 
main body of the caravan kept on. " At last," writes 
the Chevalier du Buysson, '^ after thirty-two days of 
marching we arrived in Philadelphia. ... I think 
I am safe in saying that in Europe no campaign would 
be harder to go through than was this journey; for 
there the hardships are not continuous, they are even 
compensated for by frequent pleasures; but here our 
troubles increased with every day, and they gave us 
no consolation but the hope of arriving at Philadelphia. 
We were encouraged by the bright prospect of the 
reception we counted upon from the people there." 

Thus expectant, they reached Philadelphia on the 
morning of the 27th of July. They had experienced 
a shock at Charleston; now they had another. No 
hand was held out to them. Congress clearly did not 
want them. La Fayette himself said: "It was more 
like a dismissal than a welcome." 

But why ? Strange, one says, that a party of gallant 
and zealous young gentlemen who had come four thous- 
and miles over sea and land to fight for America should 
be so brutally rebuffed. Yet the reason soon appeared. 

What Trevelyan - calls '* the military market in 
America " was flooded with French exports of officers 

- " The American Revolution," by Sir George Otto Trevel- 
yan, part iii, p. 38. 

90 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

on a par with the defective firearms. That is, Silas 
Deane, eager to strengthen America, but unsophisti- 
cated and unequal to his task, had permitted himself 
to be taken in by the charlatan and intriguer. He was 
" totally incapable ... of noting the signs which 
distinguish an adventurer from a man of honor." John 
Adams, in his Diary, speaks of ** Mr. Deane's mad con- 
tract with Monsieur du Coudray and his hundred 
officers." " Ducoudray," says Trevelyan, '' was the 
son of a wine-merchant in Brittany, who had served 
not very high up as an officer in the French artillery, 
but who appeared at Philadelphia in the character of 
a Brigadier-General, and a noble of ancient birth." 
Du Coudray, failing to obtain what he wished, resolved 
to enter the American service as a volunteer. Here is 
the sequel, in a letter from Kalb to Broglie: 

" Monsieur du Coudray has just put the Congress 
much at ease by his death. He was going to join the 
army on the sixteenth of September. Crossing a ferry 
over the Schuylkill River (middle ferry, Market Street) 
he did not choose to dismount and, wishing to correct 
his too mettlesome animal, the horse jumped into the 
stream and he was drowned like a schoolboy. The 
officers of his suite, conducting themselves with arro- 
gance, and indulging in scandal, will, I think, be 
dismissed. . . ." 

" The fate of poor Coudray ranks with the capture 
of Charles Lee as one of the mercies which befell 
the American Republic in the outward semblance of a 
startling and unforeseen calamity." Such is the judg- 
ment of Trevelyan, who thus sums up, with severity, 
on Deane's European recruits : 

*' These gentlemen, and their fellows, belonged to 
a species very easily recognized by students of the old 
Roman and the Elizabethan comedies. Pyrogopolinices 
and Thraso, Boabdil and Parolles, might be seen, any 
fine afternoon of May or June, 1777, swaggering up 

91 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

and down Chestnut Street and Market Street in dingy 
white uniforms, amidst the growing aversion and indig- 
nation of Philadelphia. Almost all of them were 
loaded with debt, and some had left their own army 
in disgrace. The worst came from the French colo- 
nies ; bearing letters of recommendation in which they 
were introduced as officers with unblemished reputa- 
tions and splendid careers ; * brave as their swords ' ; 
in short, as mere * Caesars, each of whom was an invalu- 
able acquisition to America.' Those letters were signed 
by the Governors of Martinique and Guadeloupe, with 
a sense of profound relief and satisfaction ; but their 
perusal evoked very different sentiments in the breast 
of Washington." 

Perhaps this is a harsh judgment. Why should 
Americans look such a gift-horse as Du Coudray too 
intently in the mouth. There was another side to the 
whole business. Motives are mixed in this world. 
Steuben had the audacity to say that Knox did not 
know how to handle field-pieces. Knox, Greene and 
Sullivan threatened to resign if Congress should carry 
out Deane's agreement with Du Coudray. Congress 
wisely compromised. Du Coudray as wisely accepted 
the ruling. Brandywine battle was coming on, and 
he was going out to do his part when his spirited mare 
plunged into the river and bore her rider down to death. 

As for Washington, he stood by his generals. His 
hard sense nowhere appears to better advantage than 
in his letters bearing upon this subject. He would 
permit no injustice to be done; at the same time he 
wished to reap for America whatever benefit might 
accrue from such soldiers as Steuben, Kalb and La 
Victoire's voyagers. 

These latter looked about them disconcertedly in 
Independence Square that midsummer morning. They 
were strangers at the gate. Gentlemen came and went. 
It was too hot for the birds to sing in the trees. . . . 
La Fayette must have sighed for some of the hospitality 

92 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

of Charleston. *' Congress made them wait in the 
street while a delegate was fetched who spoke their 
language, and who was kept near at hand for the 
express purpose of sending foreign officers about their 
business. This gentleman indicated to them, in very 
intelligible French, that they were a parcel of adven- 
turers and that Philadelphia contained far too many 
of their sort already." We have in La Fayette's 
Memoirs a little account of this freezing reception 
at the end of a long, arduous and rather hot journey. 
He says he " did not permit himself to be disconcerted." 
He shrewdly suspected that his letters had not been 
read. James Lovell was chairman of the Committee 
of Foreign Affairs, and he it was who stepped into 
the lobby to speak a word to La Fayette and his com- 
panions. Lovell figured more conspicuously at this 
period of the Revolution than at any other time. Many 
carping expressions of his are cited by writers who tell 
the story of the Conway Cabal, to which we shall soon 
come. He was censorious, though not more so than 
John Adams and other colleagues; and probably felt 
that he was acting a patriot's part in picking flaws in 
Washington's generalship and in turning the cold shoul- 
der toward the troublesome foreigners with the sun- 
burnt faces. La Fayette could not use English well 
enough at that time to urge his case with Lovell; 
but he did a much better thing : he addressed the mem- 
bers of Congress as follows: 

*' After the sacrifice I have made, I have the right 
to exact two favors : One is to serve at my own expense, 
the other is to serve at first as volunteer." 

" This style, to which they were so little accus- 
tomed," adds La Fayette, " awakened their attention ; " 
and Congress at once passed a resolution commend- 
ing his zeal in the cause of liberty and making him a 
Major-General. 

93 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Clearly, La Fayette had a value, aside from any- 
thing he himself might do, whether as an aide or 
general of division. There would be the very greatest 
advantage in a French alliance, and here was a noble- 
man with friends at the French Court and who had 
fallen as madly in love with liberty as though that 
abstract goddess of the wildwood were flesh-and-blood 
maiden like the lovely Quaker belles he saw pass Inde- 
pendence Hall. An alliance! Was that not what 
everyone was secretly hoping for? Perhaps some of the 
members of Congress already knew what was in 
Franklin's mind and on his programme. If this 
appended letter of his had not then reached Philadel- 
phia, it was but a little while in coming. He wrote : 

** The Marquis de La Fayette, a young nobleman of 
great family connections here and great wealth, is gone 
to America in a ship of his own, accompanied by some 
officers of distinction, in order to serve in our armies. 
He is exceedingly beloved, and everybody's good wishes 
attend him. We cannot but hope he may meet with 
such a reception as will make the country and his 
expedition agreeable to him. Those who censure it 
as imprudent in him, do, nevertheless, applaud his 
spirit ; and we are satisfied that the civilities and respect 
that may be shown him will be serviceable to our affairs 
here, as pleasing not only to his powerful relations and 
the Court but to the whole French nation. He has left 
a beautiful young wife and for her sake, particularly, 
we hope that his bravery and ardent desire to distin- 
guish himself will be a little restrained by the General's 
prudence, so as not to permit his being hazarded much, 
except on some important occasion/' 

About this time La Fayette first met Washington. 
It was in Philadelphia, *' at a dinner at which several 
members of Congress were present." La Fayette says 
that although the Commander-in-Chief " was sur- 
rounded by officers and citizens it was impossible to 

94 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

mistake for a moment his majestic figure and deport- 
ment ; nor was he less distinguished by the noble affa- 
bility of his manner." " When they were separating," 
says Sparks, " Washington drew La Fayette aside, and 
expressed much kindness for him, complimented him 
upon his zeal and sacrifices, and invited him to con- 
sider the headquarters as his own house, adding with 
a smile, that he could not promise him the luxuries of 
a court, but that, as he was become an American soldier 
he would doubtless submit cheerfully to the customs 
and privations of a republican army. The next day 
Washington visited the forts of the Delaware, and 
invited La Fayette to accompany him." Then he went 
up to Neshaminy to see the army. ''About ii,ooo 
men, ill armed, and still worse clothed, presented a 
strange spectacle to the eye of the young Frenchman." 
Their clothes were parti-colored, and many of them 
were almost naked; the best clad wore hunting shirts, 
large gray linen coats which were much used in Caro- 
lina. As to their military tactics, it will be sufficient 
to say that for a regiment ranged in order of battle 
on the right of its line, it was necessary for the left 
to make a continued counter-march. They were always 
arranged in two lines, the smallest men in the first line ; 
no other distinction as to height was ever observed. 
In spite of these disadvantages, the soldiers were fine, 
and the officers zealous ; virtue stood in place of 
science and each day added both to experience and 
discipline. ' We must feel embarrassed,' said General 
Washington, * to exhibit ourselves before an officer who 
has just quitted French troops.' * It is to learn and 
not to teach that I come hither,' replied La Fayette, and 
that modest tone, which was not common to Europeans, 
produced a very good effect." 

Thus met the two men whose names were ever after 

' Memoirs : M. de La Fayette. 
95 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

to be linked in ardent terms by grateful Americans. 
Though Washington had won his spurs, he was still 
surrounded by lukewarm supporters who questioned 
alike his policy and genius and who were quite ready 
to strip him of high command if the opportunity should 
arise. La Fayette, untried, deemed unlikely, because 
of his youth, to supersede any American officer of 
consequence, soon became a headquarters favorite. 

In the month that elapsed between the morning 
when he stood knocking at the door of Congress and 
the day he rode past that same hall, croup to croup 
with Washington, at the head of the army, La Fayette 
had won his way into favor. Yet he still had one 
thing to do to put him safe and fast into the hearts 
of the soldiers of the Continental line. Shoulder- 
straps are shoulder-straps, and glitter on a Marquis is 
no better than on another ; but blood is blood, and when 
a man gives it freely, without blenching, he is true, he 
its: trusty. That was to be proved in a' little affair just 
on ahead. They would find Howe, by and by; and 
when they got up with him they would see for them- 
selves whether the Marquis meant much or little. 

But where was Howe? That was the main ques- 
tion, in camp and Congress; Washington diligently 
sought an answer. There was a great galloping to and 
fro; but no courier brought definite news. All were 
mystified. 

As a matter of fact, Howe, who, in June, was fifty 
miles northeast of Philadelphia, found himself two 
months later fifty miles southwest of Philadelphia. 
Call Philadelphia " Robin Hood's Barn ; " and one may 
add that he had gone all the way around it, in order 
to get inside. Why he did not strike from the Jerseys, 
but circuitously struck from Maryland, is a matter as 
hard to elucidate now as it was then. 

The general situation was : Burgoyne coming down 
96 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

from Canada, hoped that Howe would aid him in split- 
ting the continent in twain along the line of the Hud- 
son. That was the obvious thing to do ; why, therefore, 
did not the British War Office order it done? Lord 
George Germain is declared by some to have blundered 
as fatally in this matter as he did at Minden. There 
is a story that, at vacation time, on pleasure bent, he 
hurried away from his London office, leaving unsigned 
an order for Howe to help Burgoyne; and that he 
did not realize his enormous error until his return. But 
Trevelyan declares that Germain approved of Howe's 
Philadelphia expedition, expecting it to be a short, 
sharp affair, well over in time for him to go clasp hands 
with Burgoyne. The recreant General Charles Lee, 
then a prisoner, is said (by some, though others deny it) 
to have put the Philadelphia plan into Howe's head. 

Howe was at sea, with 300 sail and 18,000 men, a 
long time. Washington was on the watch. He spent 
three weeks in the utmost perplexity, without hearing 
a word. Then on July 30, the fleet was sighted at the 
Capes of the Delaware. Howe, then, would come up 
the bay ? Not so fast ! It soon appeared that he had 
sailed out and off. But whither ? Washington received 
a decoy letter on the subject. Howe, it said, was bound 
for Boston. Washington's army was at the northern- 
most tip of Philadelphia county — at School Lane and 
Township Line; it was marched along York Road; 
and, on August 9, halted at a cooler, cleaner camp, 
in the lovely broad meadows of the Neshaminy, in 
Bucks. Why halt? There was fresh and big news. 
Howe was not bound for New York, nor for Boston ; 
but was pointing south. He had been sighted at Sine- 
puxent Bay.* Just as Washington ^ had made up 

* General David Forman watched the British fleet sail 
southward from Sandy Hook, and sent couriers to General 
Washington and the Executive Council of Pennsylvania. This 
body dispatched Captain John Hunn to scout along the Jersey 

7 97 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

his mind that he would find his foe on the Hudson, 
here he was, sHpping back into bewilderment. There 
was a council of war (attended by La Fayette) on 
August 21, at which it was decided that Howe'' must 
really have made off for the far Carolinas; then on the 
22d, this decision was overturned by a courier sent 
post haste from Congress — Howe was in the Chesa- 
peake with all his ships and all his men. Perhaps not 
all his ships, for there had been squalls; nor all his 
men, since the heat had drawn the very tar out of the 
timbers, and had caused great suffering. On those 
crowded ships it was terribly fetid below decks ; and, 
when they entered the land-locked Chesapeake, the 
sun smote them. Water grew scarce and bad. Supply 
boats had passed from ship to ship, as the fleet ascended 
the bay. Lest they should drink up the last water in 
the casks, horses were thrown overboard. Lucky it 
was for La Fayette's side at Brandywine, that the 
sharks had eaten those cavalry horses of Cornwallis. 
But, hard as was Howe's voyage, his army was 
practically unimpaired when it landed, on August 25, 
at Head of Elk — scarcely more than a day's march 
from the spot where it might have debarked almost a 

coast. He spied the ships off the Capes and sent the news. 
Henry Fisher, of Sussex, in Delaware, sent off an express. 
This courier left Lewes at 10 a.m. and reached Chester at 
5.45 P.M. — a wild ride. 

^Just how busy Washington was is well shown by his 
letters dated August, 1777. They touched upon many subjects, 
such as the whereabouts of the British fleet ; his own march- 
ings and counter-marchings ; the peril of Philadelphia ; the 
river defences; the checking of Burgoyne; inoculation for 
small-pox, which he favored ; and much else. A letter to Ben- 
jamin Harrison, dated Neshaminy Bridge, 19 August, is de- 
voted to clearing up the case of La Fayette. He wishes to know 
what Congress intended. Should he have a command? " No," 
Harrison replied ; " depend on it, Congress never meant that 
he should have one." His rank was honorary. 

® Lord Howe commanded the fleet ; his brother, Sir Wil- 
liam Howe, the army and the expedition. Their elder, and, 
perhaps abler, soldier-brother, had died in Canada. 

98 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

month before if the fleet had kept on up the Delaware 
to New Castle. 

At any rate, in the larger sense, the British had 
made a huge strategical blunder, destined to foster 
the French alliance and to facilitate American inde- 
pendence. For Howe^s two months' manoeuvres on 
sea and land had cost the British precious time and 
would also cost them Burgoyne's army. 

Washington's course was plain. He broke camp 
at Neshaminy, on August 22; and, next day at Sten- 
ton, arranged to march his troops from that point 
through Philadelphia, and so on southward. La Fay- 
ette rode side by side with Washington at the head 
of the column. A mile from the city there was a halt 
in order that the Continentals might close up. They 
were *' ragged " sure enough ; but so jaunty, with their 
sprigs of green in their hats, that *' in spite of their 
nakedness," they " presented a creditable appearance." 
One often thinks of the picture made by this column 
of eleven thousand men, as it came down Front Street. 
There is a road-like look to Front Street, which bends 
and dips and rises, and which with its colonial dwellings 
and warehouses seems a fitting frame for the marchers. 
On they came, with the drums and fifes of each brigade 
collected in the center of it, all playing a tune for the 
quick step; and, wheeling into Chestnut Street, passed 
westward to the Common, with great spirit, great vigor 
and a dare-devil swing to them. " From the State 
House," wrote Henry Marchant, " we had a fair view 
of them as they^ passed in their several divisions. The 
army alone, with their necessary cannon — and artillery 
for each division, exclusive of their baggage- wagons, 
guards, etc., which took another route — were upwards 
of two hours in passing with a lively, smart step." 

They crossed the Schuylkill ; then marched by the 
99 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

King's-road to Chester and Wilmington and, finally, 
drew their line at the old shipping town of Newport 
on the Christiana — a tidewater stream which, swallow- 
ing the Brandywine and all the rocky creeks that cut 
the northern boundary arc of Delaware State, itself 
disembogues into the great river of that name. Thus 
placed on the northern brim of the Christiana basin, 
Washington's army faced towards the invaders who 
were hidden by the wooded hills miles away on the 
farther southwestern side. Between the hostile forces 
stretched broad expanses of lowland — part cripple,^ 
part meadow, the meeting place of the creeks, haunt 
of wild fowl and at this season frequented by great 
flocks of reed and rail. Here were acres of rushes, 
tall reeds waving in the wind, cat-tails, marshmallow 
and all the blooms and birds and buzzing insects of 
early autumn. But for the deep streams, this might 
have been the grand battleground of the Revolution;^ 
as it was, only sharp outpost fights occurred in the 
Christiana plain. In this category is to be classed 
the smart skirmish at Cooch's Bridge, at the foot of 
Iron Hill, between a force of reconnoitering redcoats 
and General Maxwell's picked corps of light infantry. 
Delawareans say that the Stars and Stripes,^ as offi- 
cially designed, were first borne in battle at this point.^ 

' This is an Americanism, yet no other word fits. " A 
dense thicket," Thornton defines it. In the Penn and Logan 
correspondence, 1705, \ol. i, p. 234, occurs this : " [Part] upland, 
the rest swamp and cripple that high tides flow over." 

'Congress resolved, June 14, 1777, "that the flag of 
the 13 United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white; 
that the Union be 13 stars, white on a blue field, represent- 
ing a new constellation." The stars were arranged in a 
circle. This was the flag unfurled at Cooch's Bridge. 

"The date was September 3, 1777. There is a contro- 
versy on this subject. It is asserted that an improvised flag, 
showing the 13 stripes, was first used at Fort Stanwix 
(Schuyler), Aug. 3, 1777. But the stars were absent. See 
" Where the Stars and Stripes were First Shown in Battle," by 
Judge Henry C. Conrad, Mag. of Hist, vol. vi, pp. 206-220. 

100 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Iron Hill invited Washington's eye, as he rode over 
the debatable ground between his own forces and the 
enemy. La Fayette and Greene were with him; and 
together they ascended the height. Here it was, 
according to Francis Vinton Greene, that General 
Nathanael first made La Fayette's acquaintance, ** and 
began that warm friendship which continued unbroken 
throughout the remaining years of Greene's life, and 
after his death was extended by La Fayette to Greene's 
son and grandson." The three, with their aides, must 
have made an interesting group as they reined in their 
horses on the crest of the highest hill in Delaware. ^^ 
To the east, looking back toward their own army, they 
saw the broad valley of the Christiana, the far-away 
housetops in Wilmington and the mile-wide river with 
its many sails. Northward was Newark, with its one 
long street, now the seat of Delaware College, then a 
fine old academic town, where three signers of the 
Declaration of Independence had got their schooling; 
and just beyond Newark was as lovely a range of hills 
as one need wish to see — beautiful hills rolling down 
out of Pennsylvania, and bringing with them in their 
north-and-south ravines such rippling, foaming streams 
as the White Clay, the Red Clay, Pike Creek, Mill 
Creek and the Brandywine. Along which of these 
would Washington draw his line of defense ? Greene's 
first line was wiped out by events. Then, by Greene's 
advice, the Red Clay position was speedily abandoned 
as untenable. Howe marched through Newark, seized 
the strategical roads up in the hills at Hokessin and 
quickly concentrated at Kennett Square on the old 

^^ It was a risky proceeding. They could see north, 
east and south; but not to the west, with its timbered hill; 
in which, for all they knew, a pouncing enemy lurked. They 
might easily have been captured. For reference to the ascent 
of Iron Hill, see F. V. Greene's " Life of Greene." 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

highway that had been cut in the wilderness, in WiUiam 
Penn's time. He had thus put himself in a threatening 
posture astride the main southwestern approach to 
Philadelphia. Simultaneously, he had gained a posi- 
tion from which he might shoulder and crowd the 
Continental army into the Delaware River. Running 
through forests between high banks, in a region of 
gneiss and red shale, the Brandywine had many fords — 
Pyle's, Chadd's, Brinton's, Jones's and Wistar's. On 
the north branch were others, and on the west branch 
others still. But the chief ford was Chadd's, near 
Chad's farmhouse, where lived John and Amos Chad. 

Picturesque indeed was this long-settled part of 
Pennsylvania, where the rounded hills in all their grace 
of line, the sloping, well-kept, stone-fenced fields, the 
farmhouses embowered invitingly, made anything but 
a setting for bloody battle. For this was a Quaker 
country ; and nowhere on earth did the swallows skim 
the stubble fields with more winsomeness and less fear 
of molestation. Near Chadd's was Birmingham Meet- 
ing. There were many such stone meeting-houses in 
this lower part of Chester County. Westward was 
Kennett Meeting ; and, beyond that, at Kennett Square 
(home of Bayard Taylor's people — " Hessian Hill ") 
was now encamped the strongest army in the service 
of the King of England. 

The fog gone, out came the sun, all the hotter. 
There had been no rain since the 26th of August ; and 
dust arose as the farmers, plowing for winter wheat, 
ran their furrows. " The upland pastures were brown ; 
dust had settled on the forest foliage; the whole face 
of nature was athirst; and the Brandywine, flowing 
from north to south, was shrunken and narrow." " 

Such was the interesting scene; as for the partici- 

" " Brandywine, 1777," by Howard M. Jenkins, Lippin- 
cott's Magazine, Sept., 1877. 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

pants, they were no less interesting/- Within compass 
of a few miles, had gathered great numbers of picked 
troops, as well as a great number of men now celebrated 
in Anglo-American annals. Of the famous men in the 
fight, besides Howe, who, when seen afar, looked like 
Washington, there was Cornwallis, short, thick-set, 
blinking with his left eye ; and when excited in battle, 
constantly taking off and putting on his hat.^^ " Corn- 
cob has blood in his eye," said his soldiers. Knyp- 
hausen, sharp-faced, talked to his troops in German. 
Major Andre, young, comely, fine-natured, was on 
the field. So were Major-General Grey (Wayne's 
antagonist), an accomplished officer, and Agnew, soon 
to die. On the American side was Wayne, now within 
a few miles of his home, and who must have felt that 
he was fighting for his very hearthstone. Ruddy-faced, 
eagle-eyed, he was in his prime — a hard student as 
well as hard fighter. Greene, too, was a student. He 
was bigger-bodied than Wayne — corpulent, indeed, and 
quite florid. Of " Light Horse Harry," Lee, then 
twenty, it was said that " he came forth a soldier from 
his mother's womb." There was persiflage in those 
days, as well as sentimentality; Washington was fond 
of " Light Horse Harry " because he had been in love 
with the bold young trooper's mother — the lowland 
beauty of *' Green way Court." Nor may we forget 
that with Colonel Thomas Marshall, of the Third Vir- 
ginia, was young John, his son, tall, black-eyed, after- 
wards Chief Justice — one of the greatest of Americans. 
Brandywine was the initial American battle also of 

^^ Old Indian Hannah, last survivor of her tribe, who 
lived in her forest cabin not far from Chadd's Ford, might 
well have called this coming together of the paleface war- 
riors the Battle of the Suspecough, for this was the native 
name of the Brandywine. 

^^ " Stonewall " Jackson was shot in a forefinger at 
the First Bull Run. He held the hand up to keep the blood 
from dripping. Ever after, in a fight, he held that finger up. 

103 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

many men from over sea — Count Pulaski/* the Baron 
St. Ovary, Captain Louis de Fleury and the Marquis 
de la Rouerie. 

The battle opened, about nine o'clock, on tlie Phila- 
delphia road. It was Knyphausen, making a series of 
feints. Skirmishing was lively for awhile; then fol- 
lowed a furious cannonade. For all any American 
knew, Howe intended to force a passage at Chadd's 
Ford. One could have sworn, from the ferocity of 
these feints, that Knyphausen meant to go through or 
break himself. 

All the morning Washington studied the situation. 
He rode much, reconnoitering in person. La Fayette 
was with him. Once they barely escaped musket balls. 
The main road from Kennett crossed at Chadd's Ford. 
There was a parallel road, three miles up stream, called 
Street Road. This, too, led from Kennett to Phila- 
delphia, by way of Birmingham Meeting. Washington 
posted Sullivan to guard Street Road. This was the 
right of his army. In it were six brigades. Wayne, 
with Proctor's artillery, held Chadd's. Below, and 
across the creek, was Armstrong with the militia. In 
reserve was Greene's division of Virginia troops. In 
touch with the enemy — and lively touch, too — was Max- 
well's light infantry. Washington himself wa:s at 
Benjamin Ring's house, a mile east of Chadd's Ford; 
and La Fayette, at Gideon Gilpin's house, still further 

" Pulaski's American debut, as well as La Fayette's, 
was made on this field. Pulaski was with Washington until 
late in the day, when he asked for the chief's body-guard of 
thirty troopers in order to go feel the enemy. He thus 
blocked Howe's game to cut off the American baggage train. 
Near Warren tavern, his watchfulness saved Washington 
from surprise. Pulaski flew into a passion at Hamilton, who 
was interpreting for him, when that aide cast doubt on the 
information just brought. At that time Pulaski spoke no 
English. Hamilton spoke French. Intrepidity in attack 
was one of Pulaski's characteristics. A swivel-shot struck 
him in the groin at Savannah, and thus perished a friend 
whom Americans love. 

104 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

east on the same road. The ford below was guarded 
And the fords above ? Well, they were guarded as far 
as the forks; and Washington, it seems, relied upon 
Sullivan to protect those still higher up. But, really, 
what did that matter? Were not those main roads 
leading east the ones along which the enemy would 
by and by come ? What was in Washington's thought ? 
It was what all on the American side imagined. Across 
from them was a heavy fighting force — heavy and 
noisy ; certainly the Hessians and Anspachers were 
there, and the Queen's Rangers and Dragoons. Yes, 
there would be the brunt ; and Wayne, backed by 
Greene, must take it at its hottest. Howe making a 
feint to the northward ? Well, let him ! Let him go a 
little farther — let him draw off as many of his troops 
as he pleased. It was Washington's purpose to dash 
across the Brandywine and overwhelm Knyphausen 
before Cornwallis could countermarch and come to the 
rescue. But where was Cornwallis? Might he not be 
in hiding just beyond his screen of thick timber, with 
a road open to Chadd's, and troops ready to dash upon 
the Americans should they venture battle beyond the 
gorge of the stream ? It was a time for wariness. Thus 
pondered the American chief, poorly provided with 
lighthorse,^^ for lack of spies and scouts, yet seek- 
ing with the greatest diligence to fathom Howe's 
design and formulate a plan of his own that might in- 
volve the minimum of risk for an army America could 
not afford to lose. Ruinous, indeed, would it be if that 
forlorn hope of the continent should be overwhelmed. 
So passed the foggy morning. Near noon came 
further news of the northward march of the Cornwallis 
column, which certainly trailed a voluminous dust 

" Colonel Theodoric Bland had some lighthorse and 
scouted west from Jones' Ford. He hit upon Cornwallis and 
sent word to Sullivan. Colonels Hagen and Ross similarly- 
reported. 

105 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

cloud. Washington ordered Sullivan to cross the creek 
and attack Cornwallis. He would simultaneously 
smite Knyphausen. Again came contradictory and 
confusing reports. The order was countermanded. 
Musketry and cannon fire in Knyphausen's part of the 
battlefield helped Howe to keep up his deception. It 
appeared to the Americans that Knyphausen had the 
real strength and would make the real attack. The 
truth was he had but 5000 men; the rest of the 
18,000 would presently strike like a thunderbolt. 

Eighty-six years after Howe's perfectly executed 
flank attack, ** Stonewall " Jackson carried out with like 
precision a similar movement, striking Hooker just 
such a blow in the wilderness of Virginia. There the 
forests were thick ; here, too, at the time of the Battle 
of Brandywine, much of the country was wooded. 

" The Americans," says Trevelyan, '* were exactly 
in the same plight as the Austrians at Sadowa, and 
the French at Waterloo, and they would have fared 
as badly as either of them if Washington had lost his 
presence of mind in that moment of disaster and 
incipient panic." 

Yes, Howe was still swinging 'round his circle. It 
was as if some inner power had given him such a spin 
that he kept on going that way. He marched with 
the flower of his army (13,000 troops) under Lord 
Cornwallis almost due north, along the Great Valley 
road until he came to the West Branch of the Brandy- 
wine. This he crossed at Trimble's. Then he changed 
his direction and crossed the East Branch of the 
Brandywine at Jeffries' Ford. This brought him unop- 
posed into the southward-stretching Sconneltown 
road. With his lusty redcoats, he was on Washington's 
side of the Brandywine; on Washington's flank; with 
further good luck, such as seemed to be his on this ex- 
traordinary nth of September, he would be able to 

106 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

crush or capture the whole American army. By this 
time it was approaching four o'clock in the afternoon. 
The fog no longer shielded him ; but did he need shield- 
ing now, any more than a bolt from the sky? 

It was the day when the Friends held their mid- 
week meeting. On First-day they had given up Bir- 
mingham meeting-house to the American sick, and had 
assembled for worship out under the trees, whither 
the benches had been taken. Now they were at Scon- 
neltO'wn wheelwright-shop, sitting silently within, when 
up came many frightened people, mainly women, who 
feared the British and had been running before them. 
Then " out of the woods by the creek came the red- 
coats in swarms." " In a few minutes," said Joseph 
Townsend, a Quaker youth, '* the fields were liter- 
ally covered with them, and they were hastening 
towards us. Their arms and bayonets being raised, 
shone as bright as silver, the sky being clear and the day 
exceedingly warm." There we have a picture. We 
see it vividly; the quiet Quakers drawn to the door 
by the commotion ; the distrait women ; the open-eyed 
children; the multitudes of armed men bearing down 
toward Birmingham meeting-house on its hill, three 
miles away, far beyond the stretch of intervening fields, 
which were in corn or buckwheat, still uncut, or in yel- 
low stubble. ' YouVe got a hell of a fine country here," 
said a passing officer to the unprofane Quaker. Just 
then Cornwallis passed. " He was on horseback, 
appeared very tall and sat very erect. His rich, scar- 
let clothing loaded with gold lace and epaulets caused 
him to make a martial appearance." There was a 
halt. The soldiers got into the corn-patches. The 
officers were *' stout, portly men, well dressed and of 
genteel appearance ; and did not look as if they had been 
exposed to any hardship ; their skins were as white and 
delicate as is customary for females brought up in large 

107 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

cities or towns." Stroke by stroke, the Quaker youth 
paints clear pictures for us. We begin to see the 
British army in a way not to forget it, if we have any 
visuaHzing power at all — any memory. One wonders, 
of course, why, after so long a sea trip, these ofBcers 
were not sunbrowned; but we do not doubt the word 
of our informant. Verisimilitude is his — ^that is plain. 
He was curious, was Joseph ; and made his way along 
the column until he came to its head, on Osborne's hill, 
beyond which, in the distance, was Birmingham hill, 
grove and old stone sanctuary. Sullivan was there 
on Birmingham hill ; and La Fayette would be there 
in a little while. 

Howe's troops were deploying at Osborne's. These 
men in the advance w^ere Germans. " Many of them," 
continues Joseph, " wore beards on their lips, which 
was a novelty in this part of the country." 

There was hurrying and scurrying now. All were 
moving toward Birmingham. They tore down fences 
to enable them to get along faster. They threatened 
to whack Joseph, or run him through, if he stood 
there, like a simpleton, and did not help take off the 
rails. He took a top-rail, but his conscience smote him 
and he got away, coming plump upon a party of high 
officers at the top of Osborne's hill. " I joined in 
with them," says Joseph. " It was now a time of some 
seriousness and alarm among them. The battle had 
commenced in earnest; little was to be heard but the 
firing of musketry, and the roaring of cannon." Among 
the officers was General Sir William Howe. ** He 
was mounted on a large horse. He was a large, portly 
man of coarse features. He appeared to have lost his 
teeth, as his mouth had somewhat fallen in." Joseph 
even " observed his large legs and boots ; with flourish- 
ing spurs thereon." All the fields were strewn with 
baggage and blankets cast aside in the rush into the 

1 08 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

fray. The battle was longer than a thunderstorm. It 
roared on till sundown. It took about four hours 
for the column of Cornwallis to pass. Last of all 
came *' a host of plunderers and rabble that accom- 
panied the army." 

Let us see what Washington, Greene, La Fayette and 
multitudes of other men equally brave did to save the 
day. It was a dramatic happening in the history of 
our country. 

First, as to Thomas Cheney, of Thornbury town- 
ship. He was a " squire " of the neighborhood, an 
ardent Whig, who had served as a patriot spy, and 
whose heart was as much in the defense of Pennsyl- 
vania as was that of John Burns at Gettysburg. 

" Squire " Cheney rode his swiftest mare that 
day, reconnoitering on his own account well up the 
Brandywine. Suddenly he surprised a redcoat column 
as much as he himself was surprised by riding into 
the thick of it. He wheeled; and, as he did so, was 
shot at, but got off scot-free and ran his mare until 
she reeked. Thus, somewhat wild in looks and over- 
wrought, he reined in at headquarters and asked to see 
General Washington. When shown into the presence of 
the Commander-in-Chief, he told his tale and declared 
that the enemy were across the Brandywine to the 
north and were coming down with furious headway 
toward Sconneltown and Birmingham meeting-house. 
Washington checked him. The story, he said, had been 
brought in earlier, but had since been denied. Never- 
theless he talked with the " Squire " ; followed him out ; 
and made him stoop down and draw in the sand a 
diagram of the roads. Washington still questioned 
him. "You are mistaken. General," cried Cheney; 
'* my life on it, you are mistaken. Ask Anthony 
Wayne, or Persie Frazer, if I'm a man to be believed. 

109 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Put me under guard till you find my story is true." 
And he is said to have muttered under his breath: 
" I would have you know that I have this day's work 
as much at heart as e'er a blood of you ! " Just then 
a note from Sullivan ^^ swept away any lingering doubt 
of the truth of " Squire " Cheney's news. Washington 
bestirred himself. The crisis called for an altogether 
new scheme of battle. He made his new dispositions 
with the utmost dispatch, relying upon Wayne to hold 
fast at Chadd's Ford and depending upon Greene's 
Virginia veterans, under Weeden and Muhlenberg, 
to stay the progress of the oncoming flankers. Having 
thus sent his aides scurrying with order after order, 
Washington himself mounted, and turned his face 
toward the part of the field whence cannon-thunder 
came booming down. This itself was something of a 
guide, but those who were to ride with him in the 
emergency had seized upon an old farmer, Joseph 
Brown, and had fiercely conjured him to take them, 
breakneck, in a bee-line, to Birming'ham Meeting. 
Thus, then, rode the party by a short cut, across the 
fields, over ditches, over fences, through woods — ^mile 
upon mile — with the battle sounding nearer and nearer, 
and its smoke visible from every hilltop. 

At Brown's crupper was the head of W^ashington's 
horse. '* Push along, old man ! Push along ! " shouted 
Washington. 

This he repeated many times, though all and sev- 
eral were speeding at the top of their gait. " Push 
along ! Push along ! " Not a fence but was taken ; 

^^ Sullivan was greatly at fault. He had trouble with his 
generals and with other officers, contending for positions of 
honor in the coming fight. It does not excuse him to say- 
that this foolish controversy diverted him from due watch- 
fulness. He certainly did not properly act upon a clear, con- 
cise communication from James Ross, Lieutenant-Colonel, 
dated ii a.m., in which Ross warned him of what was about 
to happen. 

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CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

and soon Washington came up with his broken right 
wing; and thereafter busied himself in the work of 
making the best of a black day. 

Not far from Washington at this critical moment 
was La Fayette, who on this field endeared himself to 
the Continental soldiers. He had asked Washington 
to let him go serve with Sullivan. That officer had 
not quite completed the disposition of his three brigades 
on the new line near Birmingham Meeting, when Corn- 
wallis brought heavy battle down along Sconneltown 
road. He swept all light troops from his path ; and, in 
a little while, rolled over Street Road with his Hes- 
sians, Anspachers and Chasseurs. Two of Sullivan's 
brigades broke under the onslaught ; and only Stirling 
and La Fayette stood up unbeaten. Sullivan himself 
joined them, and by and by Washington. They were 
at the centre of Sullivan's line, and held on a long 
while. Close at hand was the meeting-house. Corn- 
wallis focussed upon them all his available artillery, 
and threw at them his best available troops. It was the 
hornets' nest. Two of Sullivan's aides were killed. 
His horse was shot under him. Here the earth was 
strewn. La Fayette, who realized the necessity of 
holding the enemy at this key-point of the field, also 
saw how great a strain it was on Stirling's men. 
Accordingly he dismounted ; and, as the crisis was on, 
ran forward among them, sword up, to cheer them, and 
fetch back the faltering. While thus engaged, in the 
thick and fury of it, he was hit by a musket-ball, which 
passed clear through his leg below the knee, but luckily 
severed no artery and broke no bone. Major de Gimat, 
his aide, helped him to get to the rear. A little later 
that part of the field was swept by the enemy ; but, by 
great good fortune Major de Gimat piloted La Fayette 
out of the range. The boot was full of blood, and run- 
ning over with it, when a surgeon was found. A 

III 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

temporary dressing was deemed sufficient. La Fayette, 
with Major de Gimat, then moved off the field toward 
Chester. Eager though he was to re-engage in battle, 
he was too weak from wound-shock ^' and loss of 
blood, as well as reaction after the fierce melee, to obey 
his impulse.^^ 

He had the satisfaction of feeling that he had done 
some good, and there was further hope and rejoicing 
when he heard Greene break out in fierce and significant 
battle a little ways off. Greene it was, indeed, who 
finally saved the day at Brandywine. When ordered 
by Washington to move at double-quick to Sullivan's 
rescue, he made a march of extraordinary celerity, up 
hill and down. His infantrymen, mainly Virginians, 
ran four miles in forty-two minutes; and then with- 
out an instant's pause threw themselves into the fight 
with such ferocity as to give the enemy first a check 
and then something to think about. They caught the 
oncoming British with fierce fire at fifty yards, and thus 
held them for an hour. By this time Washington had 
disentangled his army, and Greene was at liberty to 
choose a less exposed position. So he drew back in 
the direction of Dilworth and occupied a defile until 

" The place where La Fayette received his wound, as 
pointed out by himself in 1825, was on the high ground a 
little northwest of the frame public school-house and southeast 
of the present residence of John Bennett. It occurred while 
Washington in person and the worthy young Frenchman 
were endeavoring to rally some of the retreating regiments. 
— " History of Chester County, Pa.," by Smith Futhey and 
Gilbert Cope. 

^* Here is an inscription copied from a tombstone at 
Middletown, Md.: "Sergeant Laurence Everhart, born 
May 6, 1755; died Aug. 6, 1840; buried at Middletown, Md. 
Rescuer of Major Wm. Washington, at Cowpens. He as- 
sisted in the most remarkable battles of the American Revo- 
lution. At the Battle of Brandywine, Sept. 11, 1777, when 
La Fayette was wounded, he and Sergeant Wallace rescued 
him from his perilous situation and carried him on their 
backs 2 miles to the home of a friend." Mrs. M. B. Watt, 
Phila., owns an engraving of Wallace made when he was 105. 

112 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

darkness put an end to the battle. Then the whole 
army retreated to Chester/'* 

The Americans lost eleven guns and looo men; the 
British lost 600 men. It was Howe's battle in that it 
gave him Philadelphia ; but he had not won it without 
suffering hard knocks. He actually had to borrow rebel 
surgeons to look after his w^ounded. 

As for the retreating patriots on the Chester road, 
they were in a sad plight. " In the midst of the hor- 
rible confusion," said La Fayette, " and with the 
growing darkness, it was impossible to recognize any- 
body." At Chester bridge he organized fresh defense 
and awaited the coming of Washington. That great 
man had repeatedly asked for La Fayette. Seeing 
him now at the bridge, his greeting was full of solici- 
tude for him on account of the wound. By his direc- 
tion Surgeon William Magaw of the First Pennsylvania 
dressed it. 

Here is a flashlight reminiscence of the scene at 
this point. It is from an account of Colonel John 
Cropper of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He was 
about La Fayette's age. One of his grandsons was the 
celebrated Henry A. Wise: 

Gathered around him [Cropper] in after years on 
the winter nights at Bowman's Folly, the children would 
never tire of hearing him relate the story of the bloody 
fight at Brandywine, when the Seventh Virginia, the 
command of which had devolved upon him, was almost 
cut to pieces, and he himself wounded by a bayonet 
thrust ; and how when the ensign had been killed and 
the colors captured, he drew a ramrod from a miusket, 

^^ Brandywine battle caused bitterness of feeling 
among many American officers. In some cases bruised 
honor had to be poulticed. Mrs. Christian Hench was 
obliged to interpose between two wounded officers in the 
same room in her house at Valley Hill. They had sent their 
pistols down to be cleaned, and were about to sit up in bed 
to fight a duel. She kept their pistols from them until " they 
cooled off." 

8 113 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

tied his red bandanna handkerchief to the end, and 
hoisted it as a flag; and upon meeting General Knox 
on Chester Bridge, the latter alighted from his horse, 
and pressing him to his bosom, said: "The boy we 
thought lost is found." 

When the Third Virginia got to the bridge Colonel 
Custer used his ramrod similarly. He put a white 
handkerchief on it and held it up so that his men might 
thus be guided across a dark and dangerous stream. 

Meantime Washington was too weary to take up 
his quill ; his aide Harrison was too *' distressed '* ; so 
Pickering, another aide, really wrote Washington's 
letter to Congress announcing the disaster of the day. 
Washington dictated a consolatory postscript. 

Congress, in Philadelphia, had heard the Brandy- 
wine cannon and soon became aware of the Brandywine 
news. Its members had no notion of being the guests 
of Sir William Howe with a redcoat guard at their 
door. They must get away, and the sooner they should 
set off the better. 

" It was a beautiful, still, moonlight morning," 
wrote Thomas Paine, to Benjamin Franklin, '' and the 
streets were full of men, women and children as on 
market day." Franklin knew his Philadelphia and its 
September moonlight, and he could have had little 
difficulty, faraway though he was, in imagining the 
unwonted scene — the quiet Quaker evacuation as citi- 
zens and Congress alike took boat up-stream for safer 
reaches of the broad river. The British fleet had not 
yet entered the Delaware; in fact, the defenses would 
hold for a month yet. It was by water that La Fayette 
reached Philadelphia from Chester; and so passed 
northward to Bristol, where Congress reassembled. 
But Bristol was too near the British; the line of the 
Blue Ridge was a better place for the non-combatant 
fathers of the people; so Congress moved into the 

"4 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

interior. That beautiful valley skirting the high moun- 
tains south westwardly from the Delaware clear on 
down to Tennessee — whether called Lebanon, Cumber- 
land, or Shenandoah — was a good place to go. Con- 
gress went as far as York only ; but it was in the great 
" Back country," if not at the back door, of the 
continent. 

Meantime, September 26, Lord Cornwallis led the 
British army into Philadelphia. A ten-year-old 
boy who saw the conquering heroes come, wrote 
subsequently : 

*' I went up to the front rank of the Grenadiers 
when they had entered Second Street. Several of them 
addressed me thus : ' How do you do, young one ? ' 
' How are you, my boy ? ' in a brotherly tone that seems 
still to vibrate on my ear. The Hessians followed in 
the rear of the Grenadiers. Their looks to me were 
terrific — their brass caps, their mustachios, their coun- 
tenances by nature morose, their music that sounded 
in better English than they themselves could speak, 
'Plunder! Plunder! Plunder!'" 

Many lovely women, half Tory by inclination, 
turned Tory entirely when they contrasted the fine- 
looking, well-clad British with the forlorn Continentals 
they had seen pass through the city less than a month 
before. Gay times followed through the fall and 
winter and spring, culminating in the Meschianza. 

La Fayette, likewise, soon left Bristol. Henry 
Laurens, of South Carolina, who, next year, was to 
be President of Congress, being on his way to York, 
took him in his carriage ; cushioned his leg for him ; 
and politely set him down at the Sun Inn, Bethlehem. 
This kindness was not forgotten by the La Fayettes. 
When Laurens was imprisoned in the Tower of London, 
Mme. de La Fayette urged that he be given all possible 
consideration. 

115 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

La Fayette, the Liberty Bell,-'* many members of 
Congress, crowds of highly respectable Philadelphians 
with the Whig proclivities, people with precious things 
hidden in leather waist-belts and saddle-bags^ — all these 
and many another flocked to Zinzendorf's old-world 
town ^^ on the high, north bank of the Lehigh River. 
Especially was this so about the time of the autumnal 
equinox. Who wanted to be told on by Tories of the 
Galloway type? Who wanted to be hanged? True, 
Sir William Howe was a mild man ; but, then, was not 
Joseph Galloway himself in Howe's train? Yes, he 
was back in Philadelphia ; and that fact alone was 
enough to cause an hegira of prudent patriots. Beth- 
lehem meant to live up to its name ; it had tried to 
win the wild men from their wildness ; it had been as 
a beacon on the hills — now it was to receive the 
wounded of Brandywine ; the wounded of German- 
town, -- and the sick of many camps. So crowded 
would it become that, finally, a pestilence would 
threaten. Putrid fever would afflict it. 

But now it was a clean and well-kept town. John 
Ettwein was one of its leading men; and it so hap- 
pened that he and Laurens were friends. Thus, through 
Ettwein, La Fayette was well placed at once. '' He 

^ The wagon containing " Independence Bell " broke 
down in der Platz, or Square, at Bethlehem. It was con- 
veyed thence to Allentown, where it was hidden in the cellar 
of Zion's church until danger of its seizure by the British 
had passed. 

"^ Count Nicholas Louis Zinzendorf's work must have 
appealed to La Fayette. Zinzendorf (1700-1760) and Conrad 
Weiser were eminently practical in their humanitarian 
work. Thirty-two preachers and missionaries whom Zin- 
zendorf had reared bore his coffin to his grave at Herrnhut. 

"The difference between the fighting in the World 
War and that of the Revolution is well illustrated in a note 
received by Howe after the Battle of Germantown: 

" General Washington's compliments to General Howe 
■■ — does himself the pleasure to return to him a dog, which 
accidentally fell into his hands, and, by the inscription on 
the collar, appears to belong to General Howe." 

116 




SWORD PRESENTED TO LA FAYETTE BY CONGRESS 

This massive gold sword of honor given by Congress, August 24, 
1779. was handed to LaFayette at Havre by Benjamin FrankUn's grandson. 
During the Terror, Mme. de LaFayette hid it at Chavaniac. When George 
Washington LaFayette dug it up, years after, the blade had been ruined 
by rust. LaFayette owned another blade, presented to him, in 1791, by 
the National Guard. This blade, "forged from the bolts and bars of the 
Bastille," was inserted in the handle of the sword given by Congress. 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

came with a suite of French officers." John Hancock, 
President of Congress, and John Adams, were in the 
crowd. A diarist at the Single Brethern's Ho^me 
wrote: " 1/77, September 21, Sunday. Towards even- 
ing, as the wounded began to arrive, the influx of 
strangers became greater, so that the Inn could not 
acconmiodate all. Among others came many French 
officers and colonels, and also a general who is a dis- 
tinguished Marquis." General Woodford, who was 
wounded, reached Bethlehem about the same time. 
According to John W. Jordan, of the Pennsylvania 
Historical Society : 

" When La Fayette reached Bethlehem, the Inn 
was so crowded that he could only be accommodated 
overnight. Quarters were given him in a house near 
the Inn, then occupied by the assistants to the farmer ; 
and Mrs. Barbara Boeckel, the wife of the chief farmer 
of Bethlehem farms, was deputed to wait upon him. 
But as that house was inconvenient, and as Mrs. 
Boeckel was unable to give him proper attention there, 
she had him removed to her own house (on the main 
street, below the Inn), where a suite of rooms on the 
second floor was put in order for him." 

La Fayette's host was George Frederick Boeckel. 
There was a daughter, Liesel, who helped her mother. 
*' And," says Joseph Mortimer Levering, in " A His- 
tory of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1 741-1792," "pretty 
little stories, with variations, connected with his [La 
Fayette's] sojourn under that roof, were current among 
the local traditions many years afterward." 

Levering adds : La Fayette '* occupied some of the 
tedious hours in reading Cranz's * History of Green- 
land and the Moravian missions in that country,' in 
which he became interested." But really he could have 

117 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

few *' tedious hours." -^ In his "" Memoires de ma 
Main,'' he says that while " the excellent Moravian 
brothers were mourning over his warlike folly," he 
was doing what he could to help the American cause. 
He wrote to the Marquis de Bouille, Governor of the 
Windward Islands, suggesting an attack, under the 
American flag, on the British West Indies. A similar 
letter to the Comte de Maurepas outlined a project 
against the British in the East Indies. Maurepas 
remarked afterwards in connection with this subject, 
says Tower,-* that he verily believed La Fayette would 
some day strip the palace of Versailles of its furniture 
for the benefit of '' his American cause ; " for that when 
he once got an idea into his head there was no telling 
where he would stop. 

La Fayette had time, too, to write to his wife, which 
he did most considerately, with much delicacy of feel- 
ing. Indeed, his references to his wound now seem 
amusingly reassuring. Evidently he feared lest she 
should be unduly concerned about him. He wrote: 

" Be perfectly at ease about my wound : all the 
faculty in America are engaged in my service. I have 
a friend who has spoken to them in such a manner that 
I am certain of being well attended to. That friend is 
General Washington. This excellent man, whose tal- 
ents and virtues I admired, and whom I have learned 
to revere as I know him better, has now become my 
intimate friend. His affectionate interest in me 
instantly won my heart. I am established in his house, 
and we live together like two attached brothers, with 
mutual confidence and cordiality. This friendship 
renders me as happy as I can possibly be in this 

*^ According to Lossing, " Pulaski visited La Fayette 
while that wounded officer was the recipient of the pious 
care and hospitality of the Moravians at Bethlehem." The 
"single women " embroidered a beautiful banner of crimson 
silk and presented it to Pulaski. 

^* "The Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revo- 
lution," by Charlemagne Tower, vol. i, p. 237. 

118 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

country. When he sent his best surgeon to me he told 
him to take charge of me as if I were his son, because 
he loved me with the same affection. . . . Among 
the French officers who have all expressed their warm- 
est interest in me, M. de Gimat, my aide-de-camp, has 
followed me about like my shadow, both before and 
since the battle, and has given me every possible proof 
of attachment. You may then feel quite secure on this 
account, both for the present and the future. 

*' I am at present in the solitude of Bethlehem, 
which the Abbe Raynal has described so minutely. 
This establishment is a very interesting one — the fra- 
ternity lead a very agreeable and very tranquil life; 
but we will talk over all this on my return. I intend 
to weary those I love, yourself, of course, in the first 
place, by the relation of my adventures, for you know 
that I was always a great prattler. . . . You must 
become a prattler also, my love, and say many things 
for me to Henriette -^ — my poor little Henriette. 
Embrace her a thousand times." 

As for his wound, " the surgeons are astonished 
at the rapidity with which it heals . . . pretend it 
is the finest thing in the world. For my part, I think 
it most disagreeable, painful, wearisome; but tastes 
often dififer." 

Naturally, there was some irksomeness about the life 
at Barbara Boeckel's ; and it must have been particu- 
larly hard to bear on the misty morning of October 4th. 
A rumble of big guns was. coming up from the south. 
What was in the wind ? Something ominous, certainly. 
Of course, no one at Bethlehem knew that the Battle 
of Germantown was being fought ; but in a brief space 
there were painful evidences of it. Day after day 
wounded soldiers came, besides many sick; so when, 
on October 22d, *' a final train of wagons arrived with 
their groaning sufferers, they had to be taken to 
Easton. The surgeons refused to receive any more." 

^° Henriette, born December 15, 1775, died in 1777. Anas- 
tasie, the second child, was born in July, 1777. 

119 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

But La Fayette was no longer at Barbara Boeckel's. 
The surgeons were through with him. He could not 
wear a boot on his left leg as yet; but he was ready 
for service. He quit Bethlehem on the i8th of October 
and started to rejoin Washington's army. 

By this time frosty nights had come — and, as La 
Fayette rode southward through Bucks and Mont- 
gomery, the gorgeous and glorious fire of autumn was 
in the timbered hills. There is no reference in La Fay- 
ette's letters to his impressions of the American 
autumn ; other things than tinted leaves and panoramas 
interested him. Your young campaigner as he spurs 
along sees possible battlefields around him : yon hill, 
with its glorified slopes, would make a good place for 
a redoubt; this rocky stream — how readily might one 
defend it! That great valley — what a place for a 
cavalry fight! But La Fayette, the idealist, was the 
most practical of men, when it came to working out 
the idea that possessed him. No doubt he cudgelled 
his brains a great deal seeking to further the cause of 
liberty. The skies were by no means rosy. But for 
one great triumph the defenders of the new republic 
would have had a bitterly adverse year. The capture 
of Burgoyne's army — bag and baggage, hair and hide, 
an extraordinary achievement, offset Washington's 
heavy, if heroic, reverses. In a little while we shall 
see how sequential sentiment was used by Washington's 
enemies in a vicious conspiracy to overthrow him, and 
how it involved the, as yet, unsophisticated but fast 
developing devotee of freedom. 

La Fayette and the good news from the North 
traveled toward Washington's camp close together. 
The full story of the battles of September 19 and Octo- 
ber 9 (put by Creasy among the " Fifteen Decisive Bat- 
tles ") had already reached headquarters ; in fact, there 
had been a feu de joy in the Continental camp; but 

120 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

La Fayette probably got to camp (Methacton Hill, 
Worcester township) in time to hear the jubilation 
when the first courier rode in with the news of the 
actual surrender — an occurrence of the 17th of October, 

Washington's soldiers were soon (November 2) at 
Camp Hill in a timbered range, in Whitemarsh.-** They 
held the key to Bethlehem and Skippack roads and 
faced south across Whitemarsh valley towards the 
British in Philadelphia. A thousand of the Conti- 
nentals were barefooted; nor were their feet the only 
parts of their bodies that w^ere bare. Here at White- 
marsh they lay for seven weeks. Much happened in 
that time -' — both to the army, which was strength- 
ened by the arrival of Morgan's Saratoga sharpshooters, 
and to La Fayette, who, in spite of his inability to wear 
one of his boots, accompanied General Greene in his 
New Jersey expedition. 

This was a counter-move due to the crossing by 
Cornwallis into West Jersey with a column of five 
thousand men. Greene wrote to his wife November 20, 
from Fourlanes' End, near Bristol (at which point he 
w^as to cross the Delaware to Burlington and thence 
move southward) : 

" I am now on my march to Red Bank Fort. Lord 
Cornwallis crossed over into the Jerseys day before yes- 
terday, to invest that place with a large body of troops. 
I am in hopes to have the pleasure to meet his lordship. 
This eccentric movement will lengthen out the cam- 
paign for some weeks at least, and it is possible may 
transfer the seat of war for the winter. . . . The 
Marquis de La Fayette is in company with me; he 

^^ Whitemarsh got its name because its springs ** rise 
from a marsh of white earth and sand." Camp Hill was 
twelve miles from Philadelphia. 

" Howe attempted a surprise December 5. His night march 
went for naught. During some days there were skirmishes, 
and many participants were killed. This in the time of the 
Lydia Darrah episode. 

121 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

has left a young wife and a fine fortune of fourteen 
thousand pounds sterHng to come and engage in the 
cause of hberty — this is noble enthusiasm. He is one 
of the sweetest-tempered young gentlemen ; he purposes 
to visit Boston this winter ; if so you'll have an oppor- 
tunity to see him." 

But the British would not wait for Greene. They 
were eager to obtain access for their ships all the way 
to the wharves of Philadelphia. Accordingly for a 
full month they had been hammering at the river 
defences below Schuylkill mouth. In sight of League 
Island, and the Hog Island of latter-day celebrity, 
there were bombardments and shore battles of consider- 
able magnitude. Richard Lord Howe, Admiral of the 
Fleet, was on board The Eagle, off Chester. Above, 
at Billingsport, where there were batteries, the channel 
was obstructed with cheveaiix de frise. The " upper 
stockades " were near the two mainstays in the way 
of fortifications — Fort Mifflin on Mud Island and Fort 
Mercer at Red Bank, the well-named bluff on the Jer- 
sey shore almost opposite. The frigate Augusta blew 
up and the Merlin was burnt, in trying .to force the 
passage. At Red Bank, on October 22, there had been 
a desperate battle between the assailants of Fort Mer- 
cer — 2500 Hessians under Count von Donop, and its 
600 defenders under Colonel Christopher Greene. 
Colonel von Donop lost his battle and his life; but, 
on the very day General Greene wrote his letter from 
" Fourlanes' End," General Varnum gave up the con- 
tested position — no longer tenable since Fort Mifflin 
had fallen on the i6th and Commodore Hazel wood's 
river fleet had decided to move up-stream. Before 
daybreak on the 21st, " sloops, brigs and floating bat- 
teries, seventeen in all, drifted up-stream past the 
crowded wharves of the Pennsylvania capital, with 
their rigging and sails flying sky-high, their cannon 

122 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA * 

going off as fast as the flames reached them and their 
magazines exploding." -^ Lord Cornwalhs took posses- 
sion of Red Bank ; and so the Delaware was open to the 
sea. With this main purpose achieved, Cornwallis next 
sought to protect the Jersey roads in order that pro- 
visions might come in quantity to Gloucester for trans- 
fer by ferry to Philadelphia. With the purpose of 
preventing just such a surprise as Greene probably 
intended to give him, Cornwallis held his men well in 
hand under cover of the guns of Lord Howe's frigates 
now up, in numbers, from the lower reaches of the 
river. He was safe. Greene, at Mount Holly, realized 
how foolhardy it would be to attack in force under such 
circumstances. The best that he could do was to 
give countenance to a little enterprise proposed by 
La Fayette. 

There is a tradition in the Butler family that La 
Fayette used to say that " Whenever he wanted a thing 
well done he sent a Butler to do it." Lieutenant- 
Colonel Richard Butler was in command of one hun- 
dred and fifty of Morgan's Rifles ; and, adding to these 
about as many more militiamen, La Fayette marched 
with the 300 from Mount Holly on November 25, to 
see how big a scare he could give his lordship at 
Gloucester. It was about as interesting a body of 
troop as La Fayette ever got together. The riflemen 
were " long knives " of the frontier ; Colonels Hite 
and Ellis commanded the '' two piquets " of militia ; 
ten light-horsemen rode with the detachment and not 
the least gallant gentleman of the command were 
Colonel Armand (the Marquis de La Rouerie), Colonel 
(afterwards General) de Laumoy, wounded at Stono, 
June 20, 1779, and the Chevaliers Duplessis and de 
Gimat. It is doubtful if any soldier of fortune ever 
had a more romantic career than this Mauduit Duplessis 

^ Trevelyan : " The American Revolution," part iii. 
123 



* THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

(Thomas Antoine, born September 12, 1753, at Henne- 
bont, massacred at Port-au-Prince, March 4, 1791). 
Thomas Balch says that, when a twelve-year-old boy, 
Mauduit bet an ecu about the position of the hostile 
armies at the ancient battle of Platsea and ran away 
and walked to Greece to determine it. He fought 
recklessly at Germantown; and with rare soldiership 
against Donop at Red Bank. He was the hero of that 
fight. An accomplished artillerist, he made his can- 
non fire at Monmouth long remembered. He was in 
favor of equality among men, and wanted to be called 
'' Thomas Duplessis," but he swung about, in the 
French Revolution, and became a bitter royalist. As 
leader of the " White Pompons " at Port-au-Prince, 
March 4, 1791, he was literally torn to pieces. His 
devoted valet gathered up the fragments, buried them, 
and " killed himself on the grave with a pistol shot." 
No wonder La Fayette grew emulous in the com- 
pany of such men and did a daring deed that day. He 
moved boldly toward the Delaware River and, having 
the protection of Newton creek, passed clear out to the 
tip of Sand-Point where he could see the British and 
where they could see him. There were many boats 
in the river. Comwallis was sending his baggage 
across, preparatory to his own departure. That of 
itself was a piece of news that well repaid La Fayette 
for the reconnaissance. He says, in his Memoirs, that 
he probably could have been shot if those who should 
have done the shooting had not felt sure of his capture 
by their comrades. But he and his men withdrew 
quickly and adroitly ; and, at 4 p.m., formed in the road 
leading from Haddonfield to Gloucester, at a point 
about two and a half miles from the river. They came 
down the road with a force that could not be resisted 
by the detachment thrown out by Cornwallis to protect 
him in that direction. There were 350 Hessians with 

124 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

field-pieces across La Fayette's path, but he struck so 
hard as to drive them half a mile. " We made them 
run very fast," said he. They were re-enforced, and 
again beaten back with considerable loss. La Fayette 
lost but six all told. Night came on; so he ceased to 
worry Cornwallis, who, thinking that Greene's whole 
force was on Haddonfield road, made his disposition to 
meet a formidable attack. 

This affair pleased Washington so greatly that he 
wrote to Congress about it and about La Fayette, whom 
he had but lately recommended for promotion. ** He 
is sensible, discreet in his manners, has made great 
proficiency in our language, and from the dispositions 
he discovered at the Battle of Brandywine, possesses a 
large share of bravery and military ardor." Such had 
been Washington's complimentary reference in a White- 
marsh letter, November i ; and now again he wrote — 
and, with effect; for Congress replied with this reso- 
lution : '' Resolved, That General Washington be 
informed it is highly agreeable to Congress that the 
Marquis de La Fayette be appointed to the command 
of a division in the Continental army." Upon receipt 
of this welcome authorization, the Commander-in-Chief 
appointed La Fayette as the successor of General Adam 
Stephen. That officer had acted so strangely at Ger- 
mantown as to imperil the army. He seems to have 
put that into his mouth which stole away his sense of 
direction. He abandoned the Lime-Kiln road, his 
assigned route, and struck out across the country, 
following the sound of the Chew House musketry fire. 
The result was that, in the fog and fury of a mad morn- 
ing, he clinched with Wayne, instead of with the enemy. 
The troops of this division were Virginians. They 
were, of course, as good as could be found anywhere. 

One of \Vashington's acts of self-denial was in 
refusing to march down off Camp Hill and fight Howe 

125 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

in Whitemarsh valley — an alluring field ! In his " Story 
of the Revolution," Henry Cabot Lodge says : 

" The country, with its head turning from the vic- 
tory over Burgoyne, was clamoring for another battle. 
Comparisons were made between Washington and 
Gates, grotesque as such an idea seems now, much to 
the former's disadvantage, and the defeats of Brandy- 
wine and Germantown were contrasted bitterly with the 
northern victories. Murmurs could be heard in the 
Congress, which had been forced to fly from their 
comfortable quarters by the arrival of the victorious 
enemy in Philadelphia. John Adams, one of the ablest 
and most patriotic of men, but with a distinct capacity 
for honest envy, discoursed excitedly about Washing- 
ton's failures and Gates's successes. He knew nothing 
of military affairs, but as Sydney Smith said of Lord 
John Russell, he would have been ready to take com- 
mand of the Channel Fleet on a day's notice, and 
so he decided and announced in his impetuous way, the 
greatness of Gates, whose sole merit was that he was 
not able to prevent Burgoyne's defeat ; growled at the 
General-in-chief, who had saved the Revolution, and 
sneered at him as * Fabius.' . . . But no com- 
parisons, no sneers, no rivalry, could make him move 
from the lines at Whitemarsh." These lines, indeed, 
are " as memorable in Washington's career as the lines 
of Torres Vedras in that of Wellington." 

But Whitemarsh was no place for a tented camp 
with the winds of winter whistling. Much to Howe's 
relief, Washington struck his tents in mid-December, 
crossed the Schuylkill at Swedes' ford on a bridge of 
wagons in a double row, back to back; and on the 
19th day of the month established himself on Mount Joy 
and Mount Misery at Valley Forge, where Valley 
Creek, cutting in behind the handy heights, empties into 
the Schuylkill. Here were humped-up ridges overlook- 
ing the Schuylkill Valley and Great Chester Valley, 
and from the door of his marquee, Washington, 
unslinging his glasses, could sweep the whole country 

126 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

east, west, north and south. Not only was he safe 
from surprise, but he held the key to the main roads out 
of Philadelphia. There was excellent spring water. 
There was plenty of fuel. There was timber enough 
to build a city of log huts, which Washington himself 
designed and which soon arose on the sunny southerly 
slopes. They were on streets — these soldiers' cabins : 
each brigade flanked by another, and all in a long row 
stretching from Valley Creek to the Schuylkill River. 
With clay used like mortar to chink the cracks and 
oiled paper used like glass to let in the light, the huts 
were a credit to the men who built them. In fine, 
Valley Forge would have answered its purpose as a 
cantonment if Congress and its commissary had 
arranged for proper provisions and an adequate supply 
of blankets, clothing, and good clean straw. Congress 
did nothing of the sort, and " the story of Valley Forge 
is an epic of slow suffering silently borne, of patient 
heroism, and of a very bright and triumphant outcome, 
when the gray days, the long nights and the biting frost 
fled together." -^ Wayne wrote, in sprightly style, to 
his punster friend, Judge Richard Peters : " We are 
busy forming a city. My people will be covered in a 
few days! I mean as to huts, but half-naked as to 
clothing ; they are, in this respect, in a worse condition 
than Falstafif's recruits, for they have not one shirt 
to a brigade — he had more than one to a company." 
Wayne was not the only Valley Forge humorist. Some 
a,ides gave a supper, " to which," says Elroy M. Avery, 
**no one who had a whole pair of breeches was admitted. 
. . . Torn clothes were an indispensable requisite." 
Chief Justice Marshall says that the American army 
was never so reduced — never so helpless.. That was 
first-hand testimony — he was there to see and feel. 

^"The Story of the American Revolution," by Henry 
Cabot Lodge. 

127 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

"If the British had come," he adds, " it could not have 
remained in camp. More than once they were abso- 
lutely without food." About the time the ground-hog 
is supposed to emerge from its hole, there were 4000 
men who could not decently get out of their huts for 
lack of clothes. They were shoeless, too. Varnum 
wrote to Greene, on February 12, that " in all human 
probability the army must dissolve." Many were sick. 
Many died. Many horses perished. The British paid 
gold for all they bought, but the Americans could only 
ofifer paper, upon which the canny and the disaffected 
looked askance. -^"^ *' No pay, no clothes, no provisions, 
no rum," came in mutinous mutterings from between 
the logs, as Washington walked the streets of the 
snow-covered cantonments. Dr. Albigence Waldo 
wrote in his Valley Forge Diary • "Fire-cake and water 
for breakfast. Fire-cake and water for dinner. Fire- 
cake and water for supper. The Lord send that our 
Commissary for Purchases may live on fire-cake and 
water." Dr. Waldo was a New Englander. Some of 
his fellow New Englanders yoked themselves by means 
of twisted grape-vines to sleds of their own construc- 
tion and foraged successfully up and down the snow- 
covered valleys. But do what they might there was 
starvation or the threat of it. An officer asked a 
camp-fire party what they were cooking in their kettle. 
" A stone. Colonel ; there is some strength in the stones 
if you can get it out." 

Clearly the Continental army was sufifering from 
somebody's blunder. Congress had made the mistake of 
intermeddling in the commissary and had brought about 
confusion. " Hogsheads of shoes, stockings, and cloth- 
ing were lying at different places on the roads and 
in the woods, perishing for want of teams or of money 

^Many of these profiteers of 1778 were caught and 
publicly whipped. 

128 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

to pay the teamsters." " The unfortunate soldiers," 
wrote La Fayette,^^ who had estabhshed his head- 
quarters on the southern slope of the hills just west of 
Mount Joy and within easy reach, by way of the 
Valley Creek road, of Washington's Potts-house head- 
quarters, '' were m want of everything ; they had neither 
coats nor hats, nor shirts, nor shoes ; their feet and legs 
froze till they grew black and it was often necessary 
to amputate them." 

Let no one assume that La Fayette did not do his 
best to mitigate the suffering in camp. Nor that he did 
not share in it. All were on short commons — officers 
and men alike. That same " warrior-drover " Wayne 
drove in more cattle ; but then Wayne knew the coun- 
try ; knew the people."- La Fayette could not fill his 
pockets by borrowing as he had done at Charleston ; 
he was in the position of a generous-hearted man who 
could not tap the fountain of his bounty. Moreover, 
he had troubles of another kind. It was Washington's 
worst winter,^^ and his also. But Washington's other 
name was holdfast. Adversity brought out his best 
qualities. In the darkest time he had said he did not 
think his neck was made for a halter. And now with 
distress all around him, he did not give way to the 
conspirators of the Conway Cabal. 

^^ " Memoires." i, 36. 

^^ Samuel W. Pennypacker in his " Historical and 
Biographical Sketches " gives an account of William Moore, 
of Moore Hall, near Valley Forge, with whom the Waynes 
were at odds. Moore was President Judge in Chester 
County for forty years. He was haughty, aristocratic and 
tried to force the Quakers into the militia. He called the 
people of Boston a " vile set of rebels." When the Whigs 
went to take his gold-hilted sword away, he snapped the 
blade from the handle and tossed the steel to his visitors, 
saying: "Take that if you are anxious to fight; but you 
have no business to steal my plate." The old Tory sleeps with 
the Whig Waynes at Radnor. 

^^ In Trevelyan's phrase, " Valley Forge bids fair to be 
the most celebrated encampment in the world's history." 

9 129 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Who was Conway ? He was almost as old as Wash- 
ington. Irish-born (1735) he was brought up in 
France, and was a French Lieutenant ten years before 
La Fayette saw daylight. He served in the German war 
of 1760. Balch says that he came to America on " the 
Amphitrite," fitted out by Beaumarchais. Congress 
commissioned Conway May 13, 1777; and he fought 
well both at Brandywine and Germantown. No doubt 
this soldierly service, sufficiently brilliant to cause com- 
ment, enabled Conway to gain the ear of Washington's 
enemies. But Washington seems to have suspected 
Conway's duplicity; and, therefore, declined to recom- 
mend his promotion. This refusal put venom into 
Conway's purpose ; and, from that time on till the afifair 
was concluded, he was the inveterate foe of the Com- 
mander-in-Chief. He and those who lent themselves 
to the conspiracy worked in the dark. We idealize 
our Revolution so reverently, not to say blindly, that 
we lose sight of the blunders and the bitterness 
and bad blood of the time. But there were troubles 
and dissensions and trickeries in those days, as 
now. Hard words were used and hard knocks 
were given. But far worse than the open quar- 
rels were the intrigues involving treacheries, if not 
treason. Congress was not guiltless. " Fearing the 
influence of a military chief, and being actuated by 
jealousy," it often annoyed Washington. " No doubt," 
says Balch, '* these miserable intrigues were kept up 
by the English, who had discovered that to displace 
or suspend General Washington would be to finish the 
war." Some suspected Congressmen were only on the 
edge of the intrigue. They were not actual plotters; 
but, being dissatisfied with the conduct of the war, 
were in sympathy with the contemplated changes. 
It is unfair, therefore, to question the patriotism of all 
the men involved. Some were merely mistaken ; or, at 

130 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

the worst, foolish. General Thomas Mifflin, Dr. Ben- 
jamin Rush and James Lovell were suspected of taking 
part in the plan to put General Horatio Gates or 
General Charles Lee in Washington's place. La Fay- 
ette thought Lee was deep in the business ; but, then, 
Lee was obnoxious to La Fayette by reason of the 
brazen affair at Monmouth. Joseph Reed was involved. 
In the army itself there was a Conway following. Con- 
gress selected General Gates as president of the reor- 
ganized and enlarged Board of War; made Mifflin a 
member ; promoted Conway to be Inspector-General ; 
and transferred to them certain powers hitherto per- 
taining to the Commander-in-Chief. Thus Washington 
had against him a powerful cabal re-enforced with 
authority. The house of America was divided against 
itself. But Washington must be weakened. How 
could he be undermined? In various ways. For one 
thing, La Fayette must be detached from him. How 
could the ambitious and eager youth be weaned away ? 
Why not send him on an expedition to- Canada? He 
was French ; Canada was part French. That, of course, 
was the very scheme. The plotters warmed themselves 
with wine during a dinner at York, where the Board of 
War was sitting, and where La Fayette was visiting. 
La Fayette was the guest to whom all made obeisance. 
Gates appealed to his vanity, flattered him, tried to 
fill his head with ideas of glory. The expedition into 
Canada would be a great event. Three thousand 
" Green Mountain Boys " would greet him upon his 
arrival in the North. Imagine the scene — a dining-room 
filled with smiling officers in blue-and-buff, bewigged, 
powdered; the hero of Saratoga (and the prospective 
successor of the Commander-in-Chief) at the head of 
the table ; and, at his right hand, the rich and influential 
Marquis, who might be the secret agent of the King 
of France himself for all one knew. It was a dramatic 

131 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

moment for La Fayette. When he arose to reply, all 
eyes were upon him. The silence of keen expectation 
prevailed. The conspirators assumed that he was about 
to throw himself into their arms. He gave a toast — 
to General Washington ! * *Some raised their glasses 
to their lips, while others cautiously put them down 
untasted." Consternation was in their looks, in spite 
of the necessity of subduing it. La Fayette made his 
best bow; withdrew; mounted his horse — and rode 
away — bound for Albany. Yes, he would try to win 
Canada or the French part of it — but he would do so 
only as a loyal American officer working con amore 
with the American chief. He had thwarted the con- 
spirators ; he did not as yet know that they were about 
to fool him. He had no doubt that their representations 
as to affairs in the north were correct. 

If the wiser Washington suspected that La Fayette 
would burn his fingers, he did not say so. He knew 
the fox and the Indian and he knew the paleface; 
he kept his temper and his tongue and his peace, and 
bided his time. 

That time soon came. Young Major Wilkinson — 
James Wilkinson — aide-de-camp to Gates, and a favor- 
ite in his confidential circle, met some friends from 
Valley Forge while at Reading on his way to the seat 
of Congress. He had seen Conway's letters to Gates, 
and was so impressed with the significance of a certain 
passage in one of them that he could not keep it ofif 
his tongue. In other words, the confidential secretary 
of the cabal blabbed. It did not matter that he thought 
young Hamilton and Tilghman were such dear friends 
of his as to cut loose from Washington and join him 
on the staff of Gates. It did not matter that he was 
warmed up with wine and zeal and the glowing coals 

132 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

of Mine Host's fire — he revealed enough to cause 
Washington to write to Gates ^* as follows : 

Sir: 

A letter which I received last night contained the 
following paragraph : 

" In a letter from General Conway to General Gates 
he says : * Heaven has been determined to save your 
Country, or a weak General and bad counsellors would 
have ruined it.' " 

I am, sir, your humble servant, 

George Washington. 

This was enough — a small, sharp point, well thrust 
into a swelling conspiracy, which soon shrivelled up 
like a bladder with the wind out. Gates wrote explana- 
tory letter after letter; and so did others, who were 
similarly compromised; but the exposure was all that 
was needed — the rest was mere wriggling. Gates was 
soon off the Board of War ; Mifflin resigned ; Conway 
resigned. 

'' Before La Fayette was many weeks older," says 
Trevelyan,^^ *' he returned to Valley Forge disgusted 
and disillusioned. He had informed his wife with 
pardonable exultation, that he had been appointed 
to the command of a small but sufficient army, and 
honored by a commission to liberate New France 
from British oppression.^^ The bastard soldiers on 

^* Gates complained that the vaporing of aides was 
beneath notice. He was let off lightly, as were all, save 
Conway. Gates exchanged his " Northern laurels for 
Southern willows." Conway was shot in a duel by General 
John Cadwalader, on Point-No-Point Road (Philadelphia), 
on July 4th. He recovered, apologized to Washington, 
went to France, and was last heard of in the East Indies. 
Wilkinson was in hot water many times in a long life. His 
" Memoirs," three vols., contain the Gates letters. See 
vol. i, pp. 382-411. 

^®*The American Revolution," part iii, p. 333. 

^*La Fayette to his wife, York, Feb. 3, 1778. 

133 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the Board of War whose one and only object was 
to sow jealousy between him and Washington, and 
who had made no preparation whatever for an attack 
on Canada, had told the Marquis that he would have at 
his disposal at least 3000 good troops equipped for a 
winter march. When La Fayette arrived at Albany he 
found just 1200 ill-fed, unpaid, and half -naked sol- 
diers." Stark had done nothing about New France. 
In fact, they had no love for the French Canadians. 
Arnold, Lincoln and other real soldiers, including 
Philip Schuyler, condemned the expedition. They saw 
the politics in it ; and so did Congress, which gracefully 
relieved La Fayette by ordering that the movement be 
suspended. La Fayette was treated very well by the 
wiser heads in Congress and the army, and, as for 
Washington, he could not have acted more handsomely 
than he did. 

Washington's hold upon affairs grew all the 
stronger because of this attempt to loosen it. He 
gained in another direction, during the winter at Valley 
Forge. He could not forget that he had narrowly 
escaped disaster, both at Brandywine and at German- 
town, for the simple reason that his troops did not 
know how to execute necessary movements on the 
field. " La Fayette," says Trevelyan, " coming straight 
from the parades of the Royal Household at Versailles, 
stood gazing in silence while an American regiment took 
ground to its right * by an eternal countermarch com- 
mencing on the left flank.' " But courteously silent as 
he was on the parade-ground, he was no doubt out- 
spoken on occasions when drill-masters were under 
discussion. And Baron Steuben, one of Frederick's 
generals, a stickler for exactitude, was much talked of 
at Valley Forge about this time. He began his work 
as Inspector-General in February. Up at dawn and 
out at sunrise, no one ever worked harder or more 

134 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

skillfully in drilling and reorganizing Washington's 
soldiers. He soon made them over into an army capa- 
ble of executing all essential movements. His zeal 
was unbounded; his success unqualified. 

Thus with the Conway Cabal ended, the discipline 
improved, the winter over, and the army reprovisioned, 
matters brightened day by day. Faces filled out. Smiles 
came. The songs heard were not alone the songs of 
birds. Wives of officers visited camp and brought 
brightness with them. " As spring advanced," says 
Trevelyan, " the American matrons at Valley Forge 
formed a large, and in a quiet way, a distinguished 
company. Lady Stirling was there; and handsome, 
cheerful Mrs. Knox, of whom it has been said that 
she followed the army like a drum. The sight of them 
aroused sad and longing thoughts in the breast of 
La Fayette ; although he carefully and loyally explained 
in his letters home that he did not envy his colleagues 
their wives, but the power of having their wives with 
them." General Washington's wife, whom the 
Quakers called " a pretty, sociable woman," visited 
headquarters ; and Mrs. Nathanael Greene took advan- 
tage of every opportunity to* brighten what had been 
a dark time in the lives of many young gentlemen 
enlisted in the cause of liberty. 

News of the French alliance came, and gave great 
joy to all. Officers, one by one, took the oath of 
allegiance to the United States. La Fayette was much 
in mind. It was France and La Fayette. Some of our 
honest Americans had a hard time spelling his name. 
Colonel Jacob Morgan wrote it '* Gen'l De Fiat." 
There were rumors with respect to him. The Penn- 
sylvania Executive Council wrote to General Washing- 
ton, from Lancaster, the 23d of May : " It is appre- 
hended here that the Marquis de La Fayette has been 
nominated by the most Christian King Ambassador 

135 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

to the United States of America." They wanted to 
know when he was to pass through Lancaster in order 
that they might entertain " so respectable a personage." 

But the " respectable personage " was destined for 
more alluring and more active service. He was to 
have a chance to rid himself of the chagrin he must 
have felt whenever he thought of the Canadian fiasco. 
Washington, watching from his hilltop, had made note 
of many signs of activity down at the confluence of 
the two rivers. Simcoe had been foraging in Jersey ; 
raiders were out in other directions. Moreover, he 
had reason to believe that Howe was about to evacuate 
Philadelphia. Why ? And which way would he move ? 
The French alliance might mean a French fleet in the 
Delaware. That probably was the explanation of the 
secret loading of British ships. 

It was plain enough to the Howes and their advisers, 
both oversea and on this side, that if once cooped up in 
Philadelphia, they would go the way of Burgoyne. In 
any event, Washington concluded that an advance 
guard must be thrown out to operate between the rivers. 
He designated La Fayette to command the detachment ; 
and, on the i8th of May, sent him his instructions. 
" You will remember," he wrote, " that your detach- 
ment is a very valuable one, and that any accident hap- 
pening to it would be a very severe blow to this army. 
You will, therefore, use every possible precaution for 
its security, and to guard against surprise." 

On that same day, La Fayette marched with 2200 
men and live cannon. General Enoch Poor led the 
Continentals ; General Potter, 600 Pennsylvania mili- 
tia; and Captain Allen MacLane a company of scouts, 
including fifty Indians. 

At Swedes' Ford, the command passed over to the 
eastern side of the Schuylkill, climbed to the Mana- 
tawny, or Ridge road, and advanced southward to 

136 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Barren Hill, eleven miles from the city. Barren Hill, a 
part of the high ridge between the Schuylkill on the 
west and the Wissahickon on the east, is a continuation 
of Edge Hill, which the Indians called Conshohocken. 
John Matson, a Swede, established a ford under Edge 
Hill, and a son of his still ferried folks across. Wash- 
ington looked through his spy-glass at La Fayette's 
troops. He had a fine view down the beautiful basin of 
the Schuylkill. It was a dozen miles as a bird flies. 
Hence La Fayette at the eleventh mile-stone was about 
half-way between camp and city. Having protected 
his right he threw out pickets on Ridge road as far as 
the ninth mile-stone, and ordered Potter to take post 
on the road from Swedes' Ford to Whitemarsh. Then 
he established himself at St. Peter's German Lutheran 
Church, a Gothic stone structure, with a little tower 
topped by a cock that served as a perpetual reminder 
of human weakness. 

So far La Fayette had followed Washington's 
instructions. He was on the east side of the Schuylkill 
in a position to cut off foragers and to pick up infor- 
mation. But neither Washington or La Fayette had 
foreseen that a spy would betray the reconnoitering 
force before that^ cock crowed thrice. This spy, who 
belonged to Proctor's artillery, met a confederate at 
Frankford and sent word to Howe of La Fayette's 
exposed position. Immediately there was glee among 
the British officers. Philadelphia was in fact full of 
the bloods and beaux of England : Andre, with memo- 
ries of his first love, Honora Sneyd ; Banastre Tarleton, 
the " Phil Sheridan " of his age ; Captain Richard 
Fitzpatrick who, in course of time, figured in Parlia- 
ment — as did Burgoyne, Clinton, Howe — and who 
would become one of La Fayette's dearest friends. 
These, and all their ilk, hailed La Fayette's reconnais- 
sance with sardonic joy. Here now was a chance for 

137 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

sport. Howe had just been honored at the great fare- 
well called the Meschianza ; and, within a few days, 
Sir Henry Clinton was to relieve him of the command. 
What an excellent thing if Howe could celebrate his 
exit, and Clinton his entrance, by entrapping the Mar- 
quis ! French alliance, indeed ! Well, here was one 
Frenchman — send over more ! " '* The certainty of 
this prospect," says Tower,^^ " aflforded such pleasure 
to General Howe and General Clinton that they invited 
a company of ladies and gentlemen to an entertainment 
in Philadelphia, upon the following day, to meet the 
Marquis de La Fayette; and M. de La Fayette was 
afterwards informed that Admiral Lord Howe had 
accompanied the expedition as a volunteer, that he 
might share with the other officers the enjoyment that 
all anticipated," 

All the might of mighty Britain seemed about to be 
concentrated, by regular chess-board moves, upon the 
champion of liberty. The plan was: Grant, with 15 
guns and 8000 troops, was to march circuitously, by 
the right, through Frankford and Whitemarsh, and 
cut off La Fayette from Matson's and Swedes' fords. 
He was to seize all roads and paths that would afford 
exit to, or succor from., the north. General Charles 
Grey, of Paoli fame, led a mixed column of grenadiers 
and cavalry by way of Germantown and so across the 
Wissahickon towards Barren Hill, thus approaching 
from the east about the time Grant should close in on 
the north. Howe and Clinton in person, with a third 
column, simultaneously advanced from the south, in 
order that they might attack along Ridge road, as soon 
as Grey's guns should open. Close your eyes a moment 
and paint this little picture for yourself : a moving 
panorama ; redcoats, greencoats at the double-quick 
on all the tree-hidden roads of the high ground by 

" ** La Fayette in the Revolution," p. 331. 
138 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Schuylkill side, converging* upon Barren Hill, and 
enveloping it. Each powerful column was as a finger 
on a cunning, hidden hand, slipping around under, in 
silence, until all should be ready for the grab, the 
squeeze, the mocking laugh. All went well with the 
British. Not so with La Fayette. Potter's militiamen 
were leaving unguarded the road from Swedes' Ford 
to Whitemarsh — why, no one knows to this day. La 
Fayette was unaware of this dereliction on the part 
of the militia ; he was ignorant of the deluge of fire 
about to overwhelm him. He had arranged to send 
a patriotic young woman into Philadelphia as a spy. 
She was to pretend that she must go see certain relatives 
in the city. La Fayette was repeating his last instruc- 
tions to her when word came that redcoats had been 
seen in Whitemarsh road. They were dragoons. But 
La Fayette remembered that some of Potter's horse- 
men wore red coats, therefore he was not immediately 
concerned. Nevertheless, he sent to see. Soon he had 
startling news. It was of Grey's column ; and, not long 
after, came something much more startling. Grant was 
between him and Swedes' Ford. He was cut off. A 
cry arose : '* We are surrounded." 

So now was La Fayette's true test. Gloucester was 
a lark to this. For the first time in his life, it was put 
to him to extricate himself from a perilous predica- 
ment, with all the odds against him. Well might he 
recall Washington's words of warning. How bitter 
would be the blow to his trusting Chief — to the coun- 
try ! Washington himself was not long in getting wind 
of the British movement. Through his glass, he saw 
enough to give him grave concern. Would the young 
Frenchman be equal to the emergency? Or would 
panic seize him ? Would a brain-clout come down upon 
him, benumbing his faculties? Was he a sound tac- 
tician really, or a mere Marquis who had been pushed 

139 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

forward not because of his merit as a scientific soldier 
but because of his bkie blood and his big bag of 
"Half Joes"? 

Here, in a word, La Fayette proved himself a sol- 
dier. He used his scouts and aides-de-camp with skill 
and expedition. These served him well. One aide 
brought a bit of news that warmed La Fayette's heart — 
the road leading down to Matson's Ford was as yet 
unoccupied by the enemy. The British General Grant 
had come upon too good a breakfast at Broad Axe tav- 
ern to push as he might have done ; hence the head of 
his column had not yet occupied this vital road, running 
as it did from ridge-top to river. But possibly it was 
ambushed at some secret point? There was so much 
timber on the sides of the steep and rocky ravines here- 
abouts that lurking places were numerous. The road 
w^as examined. Praise be ! it was clear ; and so were 
the hillslopes bordering it That was enough. La Fay- 
ette immediately threw out false heads-of-column to 
mislead the enemy. It was as if he were about to 
drive down upon them. Thus the needed time was 
gained for the withdrawal of the great bulk of his 
force by way of the road we have indicated. No time 
was lost. The column moved down along the unseen 
road. At its head were General Poor and Major de 
Gimat, who piloted the troops into and across the river. 
La Fayette himself remained at St. Peter's until his 
command was safe and then ordered the withdrawal 
of the heads-of-column. It w^as close enough and 
dramatic enough — this escape. " The bars descend- 
ing " did not literally graze his plume ; but they came 
quite near it. The British reached the scene just 
in time to see their prey escape. Dragoons and hussars 
claimed that they had taken some stragglers, but what- 
ever loss there was had no significance. According to 
Simcoe's Journal, " Lieutenant Wickham said that 

140 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

when he saw La Fayette's men dotting the water as 
they forded the Schuylkill they reminded him of ' the 
corks of a fishing seine.' " 

*' In the meantime," says Tower, '* General Clinton, 
advancing along the Ridge Road, quickly drove in the 
outposts at the very time that La Fayette was retreat- 
ing, and he is said to have been exceedingly surprised 
and angered when, upon his arrival at Barren Hill 
Church, he found nothing there but a column of red- 
coats marching toward him from the opposite direction, 
with no enemy anywhere in sight. The only encounter 
which actually took place occurred a little before that 
time with General Clinton's advance guard, and it 
was one of the most curious in the course of the war. 
A company of British dragoons, moving along the 
Ridge Road near Barren Hill, came suddenly upon the 
Indians ^^ of La Fayette's force, who were doing picket 
duty at that point ; the savages started up from 
the ground with their mad war-whoop ; terrified by 
the cavalry, w^hich they had never seen before, they 
instantly fled; whilst the dragoons on their side 
w^ere thrown in such disorder by a sight and sound 
equally new^ to them that they retreated hastily in 
the opposite direction." 

Back to Philadelphia went the British ; " very 
tired," says La Fayette, *' very much ashamed and very 
much laughed at." 

Next day La Fayette recrossed to Barren Hill ; and 
marched back to Swedes' Ford, and thence to Valley 

^ Wayne in a letter to Colonel Delaney says they were 
Oneida Indians. He adds : "At the first fire they killed five 
of the enemies' horse and by the war-whoop put the remainder 
to flight." In the " Public Papers of George Clinton," vol. iii, 
p. ii8, is a letter on La Fayette's " Efforts to Win the Indians." 
It is dated Fort Schuyler, 2d of April, 1778, and the writer 
is George I. Denniston, who tells how " Marquis Le Feiatt " 
sent an " engineer " to Oneida Castle with a speech to the 
Oneidas and Tuscaroras, inviting 300 warriors to join him. 

141 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Forge, along the same roads he had used in the pre- 
liminaries. He had lost but nine men. He had put. 
the British to blush. Grant " only escaped a court- 
martial " by his powerful interests. Of course La Fay- 
ette himself by no means escaped criticism. But a 
miss is as good as a mile. The soldiers who were with 
him talked of his coolness and his foxy faculty of 
eluding the *' lobsters." They sang his praises in such 
a way that he gained greatly in popularity and repute. 

Next we come to Monmouth — that final chapter 
in the book of battles fought in Philadelphia terrain. 
The Battle of Monmouth was the sequel to Brandywine, 
Germantown, and Valley Forge. Short, sharp, super- 
heated — how different were La Fayette's midsummer 
experiences on this field from his midwinter miseries 
at Valley Forge, with its bleak hills, its cutting cold, 
its hardships ! Whatever joy La Fayette had in his 
heart when he- thought of the purifying experiences of 
Valley Forge was coupled with thoughts of Washing- 
ton ; whatever thrills possessed him when bloody Mon- 
mouth came to mind were traceable to Washington. 
Monmouth, which might have been La Fayette's battle, 
became Washington's — and that, too, in a strange dra- 
matic way fit for handling by a ballad-singer, if ballad- 
singers longer sang. 

Let us limit ourselves, however, to the speedy telling 
of a plain, straight tale about it: A month after the 
Barren Hill episode, Clinton crossed the Delaware ; and 
set out, in two columns, by slow marches, northeast- 
wardly, for some unknown point. Washington watched 
him. Clinton himself led one column; following him 
was Knyphausen, with a baggage-train twelve miles 
long. What was in that train? What was not in it, 
indeed ? Certainly the caravan conveyed many a refu- 
gee, many a lovely Tory maid ; and much else deemed 
precious at the abandoned capital. It took a whole 

142 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

week for this retreating army of 17,000 men with its 
immense impedimenta, to journey forty miles. Dog- 
day heat came on. The sun broiled '' the Lobsters," 
as the redcoats were called. Of an evening thunder- 
gusts arose in the northwest, and they seemed to roll 
down out of the high hills where Washington was 
thought to be. When it " blew great guns " they 
sounded like his. By the magnolia swamps, blessed 
coolness and fragrance gave compensation for the dis- 
tress of the day. But the excessive heat, the horse- 
flies, the gnats, the blackheads, the mosquitoes, pes- 
tered Sir Henry abominably. He was in a low, sandy, 
piney country. Even at Crosswicks no one knew where 
he was going. General Philemon Dickinson was scout- 
ing for the Americans. So was Maxwell's Brigade. 
Did Sir Henry mean to strike his foe by a swift march 
northward? Or would Washington swing south and 
strike Sir Henry, dragging along across Jersey with 
groans and sweat, and trailing a dust-cloud visible 
for miles? 

Washington, for his part, was in the less sultry, 
and, therefore, less pestiferous, hills. Forest trees 
shaded his camps. Cool springs abounded along his 
way; and there was fresh forage for his horses. His 
march was less arduous than Clinton's, but his troubles 
were greater. He wanted to intercept the British army 
and smite it, hip and thigh. Moving on parallel lines 
with it, he knew, just as soon as it bore eastward from 
Crosswicks, that it meant to evade him. He perceived 
that Clinton intended to swing clear over to Sandy 
Hook, where his whole army could snuggle down in 
safety under the guns of His Majesty's fleet. It was 
clearly his business to give battle. But there hap- 
pened to be one man in his army powerful enough 
to oppose him — Charles Lee, senior Major-General. 
How could Lee thwart the purpose of the Commander- 

143 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

in-Chief? Who was he? and why, especially, should 
he set himself in opposition to Washington, who, in 
his dealings with Gates, had proved himself capable 
of standing up against the most subtle and wicked of 
cabals? Possibly this was a recrudescence of the 
Conway cabal. La Fayette thought so. In any event, 
Lee it was who now caused trouble. 

Let us not confound him with the numerous Vir- 
ginia Lees. He was the youngest son of General John 
Lee, of Dern Hall, in Cheshire, England. His mother 
was Isabella, daughter of Sir Henry Bunbury. He was 
bom in 1731 — W^ashington in 1732. He was the same 
" Monsieur General Lee, un Anglais " who had cam- 
paigned on this continent in the French and Indian 
war; who had been shot through the body at Ticon- 
deroga ; who had married the dusky daughter of Chief 
White Thunder of the Five Nations; who had served 
the King of Poland, thus obtaining the rank of lieuten- 
ant-general ; who had fought in a Russian army against 
the Turks ; in fine, who had cut a considerable figure 
in many countries and at many capitals. ^'^ *' He roved 
over Europe with the speed and irregularity of a 
meteor " — a bit of hyperbole on a par with the story 
that he wrote the Junius letters. He killed an officer 
in a duel ; and himself was maimed, losing the use of 
of two of his fingers. 

Lee was no fool as to his books. His military 
knowledge, his forcefulness, his persuasiveness, his 
caustic wit, his cynicism, commended him to the less 

^^ General Charles Lee's lively letters about himself, to- 
gether with his " plans " of campaign, his memoranda, the 
proceedings in his court-martial, his vindications, his 
" Memoir," by Isaac Langworthy; his " Memoir," by Sir 
Henry Bunbury; his "Life," by Jared Sparks, and "The 
Treason of Charles Lee," by George H. Moore — all these 
appear in the Collections of the New York Historical 
Society for 1874. They are entitled, " The Lee Papers," 
and fill four volumes. 

144 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

sophisticated officers of the Amercian army, and gave 
him undue influence over them. Lee was not alone in 
his assumption of superiority. " An arrogant contempt 
for the American people pervaded English society," 
writes William Massey.^*^ *' The colonists were haught- 
ily regarded as degenerates from the great parent race. 
Their pretensions to an equality of civil privileges 
was considered presumptuous. Their personal courage 
even was disparaged." Recall good old Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, for a moment, and his attitude toward Ameri- 
cans. He had a low opinion of us ; and so had Lee in 
spite of his championship of freedom. At the same 
time, Lee stood as high as the highest anywhere — in 
his own estimation ; and Congress and the people appar- 
ently thought well of him. Washington overrated him. 
" Tall, hollow-cheeked and uncomely, he was irascible, 
selfish, pompous and censorious; but these qualities 
were regarded as but the pardonable eccentricities of a 
great man." As to his American service : He had dis- 
obeyed Washington's orders in the fall of 1776, and had 
thereby imperilled the very existence of the main 
Continental Army, in its retreat across New Jersey. 
Then, too, he had slept out of his lines at Baskingridge ; 
and had been made a prisoner so neatly as to put it 
into many a head that the ** capture " was only a 
trickster^s name for desertion. But had not Prescott, a 
British major-general, been taken by the Americans 
at his quarters a full mile from his troops? The sol- 
diers of W^ashington's army had laughed to hear that 
a negro, using his head as a battering-ram, had butted 
through the door of Prescott's bedroom. So the two 
had been exchanged, April 21 ; and on the 20th of May 
Lee had ridden into camp at Valley Forge. Washing- 
ton's friends recalled many questionable acts and 

*^" History of England During the Reign of George 
III/' by William Massey, M.P., vol. ii, p. 197. 
JO 145 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

expressions of Lee. He had boasted that if he could 
be dictator one week he would bring order out of 
chaos. He had written to Gates that Washington was 
" damnably deficient." So when Lee opposed Wash- 
ington in the council of war at Valley Forge, on the 
17th of June, nobody was surprised. On the contrary, 
Lee drew many officers into his way of thinking. After 
all, this old eccentric soldier knew a thing or two. 
Steuben had Europeanized the army; why not take 
cognizance of European strategical methods ? Strategy 
was strategy; and had not Washington been brought 
up as an Indian fighter? His army knew him not as 
we know him — all greatness, so to say; but as a man 
with greatness still to be won, though he was in a 
fair way to win it. There were stories about him 
told over the glowing coals. He wore a number thir- 
teen boot — that was a foot for you ! When he sud- 
denly loomed up he was *' that monstrous big man." 
When younger he was a champion — so he was; he 
could out jump anybody in the United States. He was 
not a boxer, like Thomas Jefferson; but he could 
throw farther; and the soldiers had seen him ride 
like the wind. He had blood in him, and his face red- 
dened ; he was a man of great dignity, but no demi-god. 
He was all alive and full of a vigor that turned into 
vehemence upon occasion. But Washington did not 
read Lee's heart, Lee's secret purpose, any better 
than the other Continental officers. It was not until 
a hundred years had passed that the world, or a part 
of it, was half convinced that Lee had attempted to 
play into the hands of the British. He it was who, 
while a captive in New York, made plans for the trans- 
fer of the British army by water — ^part by way of the 
Chesapeake to Philadelphia, and part by way of the 
Potomac to Alexandria, Virginia. 

146 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Sydney George Fisher *^ does not admit that Howe 
was influenced by Lee. *' The mere fact of the plan 
being found among the secretary's papers," says he, 
" is no proof that Howe was influenced by it and is 
not even proof that he ever saw it. Moreover, he had 
formed the plan of going to Philadelphia early in the 
winter before Christmas, and many months before 
the date of the plan. . . . Howe was notoriously 
indifferent to advice or suggestion. If it (the plan) 
came to his attention he probably tossed it aside, and 
his secretary may have preserved it as an interesting 
curiosity, coming from a treacherous man." Bancroft 
thought Howe did not like to assist the Canada expe- 
dition because it might bring to New York General 
Carleton, who would outrank and supersede him. 

However these things may be, Washington, in so 
far from suspecting Lee's loyalty, treated him with the 
utmost deference. He bore with his eccentricities, and 
did his best to make him see that big battle was now 
the logic of the situation. Aloft sat the gods, wonder- 
ing that the enormous monster *' drawing its slow 
length along " through the Jersey woods, its head miles 
from its tail, should be allowed to escape without a 
scotching stroke. But Lee had no thought of giving 
in. He " appears to have been desperate in his attempt 
to secure for the British army undisturbed passage 
through New Jersey." Thus Tower, who adds : *' He 
vehemently denounced the policy of attacking it ; with 
great eloquence and skillful address, he argued that 
instead of molesting the retreating enemy it would be 
the part of wisdom to help them forward, even to 
build a bridge of gold to let them pass. ... In 
conclusion, he proposed that the American forces 
should advance immediately to White Plains." This 



''In his well-wrought work, " The Struggle for Ameri- 
can Independence," vol. ii, p. 75. 

147 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

was at a second council of war, held at Hopewell, on 
the 24th of June. Lord Stirling and many brigadiers 
thought him right. La Fayette, Greene, Wayne, Cad- 
walader and Colonel Alexander Hamilton differed in 
toto with him. La Fayette's speech in favor of an 
attack came too late. He was outvoted. That night 
the argument was resumed before Washington, who 
clung to the idea of strong battle, though he does not 
appear to have made up his mind absolutely even on the 
25th, or the 26th. Those two dates mark his approach, 
by way of Kingston and Englishtown, to Clinton's 
columns. They also cover what might have been a 
comedy but for the tragic denouement : Lee was offered 
the command of an advance guard of 5000 picked 
troops. He refused it. Thereupon it was offered to 
La Fayette, who accepted with enthusiasm and alacrity. 
Then Lee put up a sorry mouth. He would be eternally 
disgraced! Washington thereupon considerately 
adjusted the matter. Lee should command the 
advanced guard ; but, of course, he would not interfere 
with any plans the Marquis had set afoot in the pre- 
liminaries. Washington acted with his customary 
magnanimity; La Fayette, handsomely. Lee had 
spoiled a chance for him; but his letters of the 25th 
and 26th show the greatest complaisance, courtesy and 
good humor. His sole desire was to further the public 
service. Lee had reason upon reason for preventing 
battle. Having vehemently opposed an attack, he 
could not afford to see a successful one, such as La 
Fayette probably would have made. Having planned 
a Philadelphia expedition, he did not wish Howe's 
(Clinton's) to end in bloody disaster for a King 
from whom he might have meant to exact lordly com- 
pensation. Whether playing for a dukedom or for 
guineas, or both, or neither, or for something treason- 
able or for something merely selfish, does not appear ; 

148 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

but it was perhaps a part of his plan that Washington 
should be made a fool of. He actually had tried 
to persuade Washington " to draw off into the 
interior of Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna 
River," on the theory that the British would move 
south upon evacuating Philadelphia. " He had 
refused to command the advanced detachment," com- 
mented Tower, ** probably with the specific deter- 
mination of not making the attack himself ; and he now 
asked for the command in order to prevent the attack 
from being made by somebody else. That this was his 
purpose is evident from his subsequent conduct in the 
action. After having made his request to General 
W^ashington, he appealed to the Marquis de La Fayette 
to give up the command, saying to him : * I place my 
fortune and my honor in your hands ; you are too 
generous to destroy both, the one and the other.' " 
" La Fayette," says Trevelyan, " was not hard-hearted 
enough to reject the entreaties of a famous man, more 
than twice his own age ; and, late at night on the twenty- 
seventh of June, he wrote a letter definitely handing 
over his command to Lee. The chivalrous Marquis 
was now to learn, not by any means for the last time 
in the course of his career, that occasions occur in the 
management of public affairs when it is quite possible 
to be too much of a gentleman." 

La Fayette, with Maxwell, Scott and Wayne, stood 
at Washington's side when the chief told Lee to attack 
Clinton's rear early in the morning. He instructed 
Lee to get his generals together and give them their 
orders. That night La Fayette went to Lee and asked 
what he could do; and when, and how. Lee said he 
had no plans. La Fayette got up at four. Day was 
breaking. The birds had begun to whistle ; " I went 
to Lee's headquarters," said he, *' to know if there was 
anything new ; the answer I received was that one bri- 

149 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

gade was already marching. As I considered myself 
a volunteer, I asked General Lee what part of the 
troops I was with ; General Lee said, if it was con- 
venient for me, with the selected troops. I put myself 
with them, in full expectation that these troops would 
act and be opposed to the British Grenadiers." 

La Fayette's five thousand, now given up to Lee, 
consisted of Maxwell's corps, Morgan's, Jackson's, 
Scott's and Wayne's. They were the pick of the army 
for light service — all tried men, well officered. They 
were at Englishtown, five miles from Monmouth Court- 
house, where, on the night of June 27th, Clinton's 
army lay. 

So now we come to thel)attle. If Shakespeares had 
not been so scarce during the last hundred and forty 
years we should long ago have had a series of scenes 
under some such title as " Trumpets and Treason." 
Or, if the writer of such a historical play, had not 
determined in his own mind that Charles Lee was guilty 
of treason, he could have called his drama — and drama 
it was — '' The Exciting Enigma ; as Devised by the 
Great Eccentric ; " for whatever conclusion one may 
reach with regard to Lee's misconduct at Monmouth, 
another will be sure to dispute it. Lee, if not treason- 
able, was, and is, at least a riddle of the Revolution — 
much more a riddle of that war than was Fitz John 
Porter of the Civil War. Arnold's treason as com- 
pared with that of Lee, who was more like Aaron 
Burr, was plain. Lee does not figure in Trevelyan's 
" History of the American Revolution," or in Sydney 
George Fisher's notable work, as a man who sought to 
betray the cause he had sworn to serve. 

But to get back to that drama of June 28 and its 
moving scenes in the wooded, level country, where 
the hostile forces converged and where by the will 
of Washington one army was abo-ut to strike the other 

150 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

— how would such scenes figure in an old play leading 
up to the crisis of human passion and to that roar of 
cannon which was the greatest heard on the continent 
up to that hour? 

The " first scene of all," on that hot night, with 
the moon shining through the foliage and flecking the 
sandy spaces, might well depict the heavily accoutred 
and heavily encumbered army that was hoping to get 
away. Fatigue was upon it; and it slept in spite of 
its danger and its exceeding discomfort. Bats circled 
above the clearing at Monmouth Court-house. Frogs 
croaked in the alder cripples ; for here were the 
branches and brooks that sprang up in the swampy 
patches and formed Wemrock rivulet, a stream that 
ran northward into the Raritan River. There were 
meadows and marshes along it. Clinton knew that 
he might entangle his troops in the Wemrock and Rari- 
tan marshes should he move that way ; so he, sleepless, 
as was Cornwallis, awaited daylight in order that his 
van might push on oceanward, to the higher ground 
of Middletown, whence he could readily reach the still 
higher Neversink. Not only was Clinton up, but 
Knyphausen was astir at midnight; and soon off with 
his wagons and baw horses, along the sandy defile 
through which his beasts, stung by vicious insects but 
as yet unstung by Morgan's riflemen, labored with 
sweat and groans. Meanwhile under the moon at 
Monmouth Court-house lay some of the best troops 
in the world, commanded by some of the best officers — 
the grenadiers, the chasseurs, not to mention the 
Queen's Rangers, made up of American Royalists. 
These would move as s,oon as the road should be 
clear ; and move they did at eight o'clock, breakfast 
or no breakfast. 

Not to tell in such detail of the scene, six miles 
north, where Washington lay in more open ground, 

151 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

with the bulk of his army, which he put in motion as 
soon as he learned of Knyphausen's march, we come 
back to within a short distance of Monmouth Court- 
house. Here under the moon, and among the trees, 
we find the various commands constituting Lee's 
advanced guard. La Fayette was up and about. His 
was not the responsibility ; but he wished to acquit him- 
self like a soldier. He knew little of what Lee was 
doing — still less of what was in Lee's mind. All that 
he understood was that there was to be an attack — it 
might come any moment — and that quick concentration 
of the main corps with Washington at their head would 
follow. Wayne, nearby, felt the same. So did Charles 
Scott. Dan Morgan in the bushes, with his men in 
their breech-cloths that hot night, oiled like Indians to 
keep the pests away, had his work cut out ; and prob- 
ably did not know as much concerning the general 
plan as Butler, Jackson and the officers nearer to the 
commander of what Wayne calls : '* The Flying 
Army." These felt themselves to be the head of the 
hammer that was to strike Sir Henry Clinton and 
strike him hard. They did not think they would " fly 
the handle." 

Day broke. The sun came up, red and scorching. 
And still no action. But, by and by, the corps marched 
east, Butler in the van, and took position about a mile 
from the enemy. They seemed about to attack, but no 
attack was made. Lee blew hot and blew cold. At last 
a body of British came within view, and Butler gave 
some charging horsemen (Simcoe's Rangers) a taste 
of his fire. Lee ordered first this brigade to withdraw ; 
and then that. No one understood what he meant to 
do, save that he might be trying to draw the British 
rear guard into a trap. La Fayette asked that he might 
halt and fight. Lee said : *' Sir, you do not know 
British soldiers. We cannot stand against them." 

152 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

With Wayne it was the same. Like La Fayette, he 
chafed, but held himself in. Indeed, all the officers 
of the advanced corps were beginning to feel chagrin. 
This deepened into anger when they learned that the 
troops in rear were mysteriously retreating. What 
did it all mean? They, too, were obliged to go back, 
and it was not long before they felt British pressure, 
hot and menacing. Confusion followed. The heat, the 
mischievous, mad mix-up, the unwonted bewilderment 
of the officers, the pressure of the enemy, would have 
resulted in the rout of the whole corps but for the 
training they had received at Valley Forge. As it was, 
they felt that some curse was upon them. They 
filled the roads and paths that led back toward Wash- 
ington's main body. Some complained bitterly, almost 
with sobs. Others with faces swollen from the fire 
of the hottest sun they had ever felt, and with the 
hottest thoughts they had ever had, cursed their luck, 
cursed Lee, cursed everything. Thus the advanced 
corps passed in disorder rearward. At the same time, 
that masterful tactician, Cornwallis, gathered in his 
hand the powerful brigades of Clinton's rear guard 
and hurled them with due precision into the dust-cloud 
made by the retreating thousands. It looked like a 
disaster that might — yea, must — imperil the new nation. 
It was a bitter hour. 

But Washington was coming up. He would meet 
all this. He would take the two staggering blows full 
upon his breast — first, Lee's, then Clinton's. 

As he led his main army southward, he saw a fifer 
in flight ; halted him ; put him under guard lest he 
regain his wind and pipe some panic-breeding tune far 
down the road. Washington spurred ahead. He met 
other fugitives — men with their shame-faced officers, 
who could only say they had been ordered back. He 
struck out into a gallop, using his spurs ; and, by and by, 

153 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

his horse, reeking, got in among the men of the 
advanced guard. Seeing Lee, he '* descended upon him 
Hke an avenging deity." As he drew rein, he cried: 
*' I desire to know, sir, what is the reason — whence 
arises this disorder and confusion." 

" Sir ! Sir ! " stammered Lee. 

" You are a poltroon," said Washington. 

Bystanders declare that he in the same breath gave 
vent to a thundering big oath. General Scott, for 
instance, when asked if he had ever heard Washington 
swear, replied : " Yes, once ; it was at Monmouth ; on 
a day that would have made any man swear. Yes, sir ; 
he swore on that day till the leaves shook on the trees, 
charming, delightfully. Never have I enjoyed such 
swearing before or since. Sir, on that memorable 
day he swore like an angel from Heaven." ^'- 

La Fayette said to Chief Justice Marshall : 
" Never was Washington greater in war than in this 
action. His presence stopped the retreat. His dis- 
positions fixed the victory. His fine appearance on 
horseback, his calm courage, roused by the animation 
produced by the vexation of the morning, gave him 
the air best calculated to arouse enthusiasm." And 
Alexander Hamilton said : " I never saw him to such 
advantage. What part our family acted, let others 
say." " Our family " consisted of Meade, Hamilton, 
Laurens, Tilghman and other aides. Useful, indeed, 
did these men make themselves in the furious work 
of bringing up the troops and forming a new line. 

Wayne was first at hand and Washington used him 
as the nucleus of this new line. La Fayette was given 
a position upon which to form a second line. Wayne 
placed two regiments speedily, and soon three more, 
across Clinton's path. At this point was a ravine. 
Nearby was a farm; and into the outbuildings and 

*^ Pennsylvania Magazine of History, vol. ii, p. 141, note. 
154 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

orchard he threw his troops. On either side were hills. 
Greene, with Knox and the cannon, occupied the hill 
on the right; Stirling, also with batteries, planted 
himself on the hill to the left. Thus friendly guns 
enfiladed Wayne's front. 

It was now noon — the high-riding sun unobscured 
as yet by battle-smoke. But battle soon broke out. 
Cornwallis selected Colonel Henry Monckton, brother 
of Lord Gal way, to lead the corps d' elite of the King's 
army against the improvised line in the orchard between 
the hills. The hope was to break this line and repeat 
the victory of the morning. It might mean the complete 
rout of Washington's army — possibly its destruction. 
In forming his grenadiers for a bayonet charge, 
Monckton made them a fiery talk. His voice sounded 
over the field, from which heat waves were rising 
visibly. Wayne's men, in the orchard, heard the appeal 
and knew what it meant. The drums rolled the charge. 
As they came on, in their gorgeous uniforms and with 
their glittering bayonets, they seemed about to do all 
that their leader had asked them. They were as on 
parade; and a cannon-ball from an enfilading gun 
struck down not one man merely but a great number of 
men. And to Wayne the grenadiers became better 
and better targets, the nearer they drew to him. At 
the word, fire withered them. Some came to the clinch 
and the thrust and the knockdown, but the mass of 
them were beaten. They cumbered the fields — Monck- 
ton among them. Washington had converted Lee's 
disaster of the morning into a noontime victory. 

But the fight was still on. It was a long afternoon 
and a long battle. Cannon roar was continuous. It 
was " Moll Pitcher's " day ; ana water was the most 
precious thing on earth. *' Several of Clinton's soldiers 
ran mad from heat." " Three officers and fifty-six 
men " . . . " fell dead as they advanced, without 

155 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

a wound." Heatstroke was worse among the encum- 
bered British than among the Americans, who stripped 
to the skin. CHnton and Cornwallis exposed them- 
selves constantly. Twilight found them holding their 
ground. The moon came up. Silently the British army 
moved on its v/ay. But many deserters dropped out 
of column, hiding in the woods. 

Washington shared his cloak that night with La Fay- 
ette. They talked of the day's work — big with history. 
There in the moonlight slept the two. Each thought 
to be up before day; for the expectation was that the 
conflict would be resumed. But the battle of Mon- 
mouth was ended. 

Wayne wrote to his " Dear Polly " : " British cour- 
age failed." To Secretary of War Peters he wrote: 

" Their killed and wounded mu&t be full fifteen 
hundred of the flower of their army. Among them are 
numbers of the Richest blood of England. Tell the 
Phil'a ladies that the heavenly, sweet, pretty redcoats — 
the Gent'n of the Guards and Grenadiers have humbled 
themselves on the plains of Monmouth." 

Lee was ruined. He wrote abusively to Washington, 
who ordered a court-martial. La Fayette's testimony 
before this court appears in full in the Lee papers. ^^ 
The court-martial suspended Lee for one year. Con- 
gress, which reviewed the proceedings, dismissed him 
from the army. Lee continued to write vituperatively 
of Washington. Steuben, Wayne, and Laurens all sent 
himi challenges. Lee accepted the Laurens call,** and 
with that the great Monmouth quarrel ended. 

^ Collections of the New York Historical Society for 
1S72, vol. iii, pp. 10-17. 

** Lee was wounded in the side. He went to Berkley, Vir- 
ginia, where he bought a farm. He lived alone with his dogs 
in a barnlike house. He returned to Philadelphia, lodging at the 
" Conestoga Wagon " in Market Street. There he was seized 
with a chill, followed by fever, and died October 2, 1782. 

156 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Howe's fleet reached Sandy Hook the day after 
the battle of Monmouth. CHnton's army crossed to 
Staten Island by a bridge of boats. Washington's army 
in three divisions, one under La Fayette, moved on 
to White Plains, east of the Hudson, and sat down 
before the British in New York. For eighteen months 
it watched the enemy. 

On the heels of the exciting Monmouth affair, we 
have the much less piquant Sullivan-La Fayette- 
d'Estaing episode — the Newport expedition. Hardly 
more than k week had passed after the big battle in 
the heart of Jersey when (July 7) the French fleet, 
under the Comte d'Estaing,*° appeared off the Capes 
of Delaware. Howe's ships escaped in good time. It 
had taken the Comte d'Estaing nearly three months, 
sailing from Toulon, to reach the New World. Having 
dispatched the frigate La Chimere up the bay and river 
with M. Gerard de Rayneval, the first French minister, 
the Comte, with his twelve ships of the line, his six frig- 
ates and his 4000 troops, bore away for New York.^^ 
If he could have crossed the bar at Sandy Hook, there 
probably would have been a harbor fight of a magni- 

*^Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, Comte d'Estaing 
(born at the Chateau de Ravel, Auvergne, in 1729; guillotined 
in Paris, April 28, 1794), had a long and distinguished career. 
He was a brigadier of infantry in the Lally-ToUendal expe- 
dition to the East Indies in 1758. He saw much service in 
Asiatic waters, as well as in the Atlantic. 

*^ La Fayette wrote to the Comte d'Estaing from " the 
Camp near Paramus," July 14. This, says Tower, was the 
first of a series of important letters, 27 in all, " discovered 
recently in the Archives of the French Navy at Paris by 
M. Henri Doniol." D'Estaing probably deposited them. In 
the letter of July 14, La Fayette gave d'Estaing this inter- 
esting reminder: "I do not believe you know my handwrit- 
ing, but when I refer you to our lands in Auvergne, to my 
chateau at Chavaniac, to the fine estate of Port-du-Chateau 
and the excellent salmon-fishing that belongs to M. de Mont- 
boissier; when I mention Madame de Chavaniac and Mile, 
du Motier, my aunts, as well as the marriage of my cousin 
with M. d'Abos — these little family details will enable you 
to recognize me as a genuine Auvergnat." 

157 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

tude and spectacular quality never seen in those 
waters. But d'Estaing's 74-gun ships of the line, such 
as the flag-ship, Languedoc (loi guns), drew at least 
two feet more than the heaviest of Howe's men-of-war. 
Pilots were hard to secure. La Fayette labored to help 
d'Estaing in this and other particulars. D'Estaing's 
needs were numerous. It is idle for one unfamiliar 
with the requirements of a great fleet in hostile waters 
to assume that the French Admiral should have gone 
in whether or no. There he was, within sight of hun- 
dreds of enemy craft, but dared not risk passing the bar. 
He himself had made some soundings. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Alexander Hamilton and Lieutenant-Colonel 
John Laurens brought messages from Washington and 
La Fayette, giving him all the encouragement they 
could. They brought American sea-captains, too ; and 
at least one pilot whom La Fayette had drummed up. 
But facts are facts, and bars are bars ; and d'Estaing 
could not regard them as torpedoes and " damn " them, 
as Farragut did, and " go ahead." 

Such as a rule is the view of the earlier writers; 
but the later and the more critical experts dwell upon 
Lord Howe's excellent defense. His fleet was not in 
New York bay, but in the old Amboy bay, behind 
Sandy Hook. '' Each vessel," says Fisher, " had a 
spring line from her stern to the second anchor, so 
that when the French entered from the east, with a 
flood tide and easterly wind, every English ship could 
be hauled round to present her broadside to the French 
coming bows on, and incapable of using her guns. If 
the French survived this raking fire and continued 
their course, the English ships could swing back 
so that their broadsides would bear across the chan- 
nel." Captain Mahan thinks that d'Estaing could 
have gone in and would have done so but for Admiral 
Howe's advantage. 

158 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Another consideration : There was a menace in a 
different quarter — Congress sent d'Estaing word that 
a British fleet under Admiral Byron '^^ (whom he was 
to fight in the West Indies) had sailed from England 
to cooperate with Lord Howe. Thus the Comte was 
not between the devil and the deep sea, but might 
soon be between the uncrossable bar and a fresh brood 
of heavies from the British Isles. " It is terrible," 
said he, *' to be within sight of your object and yet 
unable to obtain it." 

Under the circumstances, Hamilton and Laurens, 
acting for their chief, arranged with the Comte 
d'Estaing that he should bear away for Newport, R. I., 
where there was to be an attack of allied land and 
naval forces on the British garrison of 6000 men com- 
manded by Major-General Robert Pigot, who had led 
the charge at Bunker Hill. The British had held this 
post since December, 1776. 

Let us glance a moment at the scene : Three chan- 
nels — Narragansett (on the west). Middle Passage 
and Seaconnet — open out, due south, into the ocean. 
Many long islands thrust their heads southward. Two 
of these — Rhode (with Newport at its ocean end) and 
Conanicut — were the scene of operations. 

Sullivan, with headquarters at Providence, was to 
be the American commander. As for the cooperating 
Continental troops, it was first arranged that they 
should proceed from White Plains under the leadership 
of La Fayette. They numbered 2000, and consisted 
of Varnum's and Glover's brigades and a detachment 
under Colonel Henry Jackson. 

This march was a happy one for La Fayette. He 
was filled with enthusiasm. He had won the heart of 

*^As a matter of fact, Byron's ships, scattered by storms, 
reached New York soon after d'Estaing had quit those 
waters. If he had remained there he could have taken them, 
one by one. 

159 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Washington ; he had won the esteem of those amiable 
and able, not to say brilliant, young men of the head- 
quarters staff. '* His influence had increased." He had 
just found himself of great use in linking Washington 
to d'Estaing. In brief, he, as a French enthusiast for 
liberty, was right at home. He was not in the graces 
of the French Court — no ; that was true, as a matter 
of fact! La Fayette could afiford to laugh at this 
turn of his thoughts. He knew well enough — and the 
Comte d'Estaing also knew it — that the Court would 
wink at his work for liberty so long as it was destruc- 
tive of British rule. " He felt assured of the pardon 
of the King." Thus his march was much to his liking. 
As he himself says : it was a rapid march " along the 
Sound, across a smiling country, covered with vil- 
lages, in which the evident equality of the population 
distinctly proved the democracy of the government." 

All good things end ; and with the end of the Con- 
necticut march came something of a damper for La 
Fayette, eager to cooperate with Sullivan and d'Estaing 
in the reduction of Newport. Washington's order of 
July 22d, placing La Fayette at the head of the conti- 
nental reinforcements, was now changed by a pleas- 
antly worded letter from the same source, dated White 
Plains, July 27, in which Greene was named as sharing 
the command. Greene was a native of Rhode Island. 
Greene would be a great help. It was a wise thing 
for Washington to do; but La Fayette naturally felt 
that his comb was being trimmed, if not cut. However, 
he accepted the transfer to Greene of 1000 Conti- 
nentals ; and, with the best possible grace, set about his 
task of helping to organize the siege. He had his regu- 
lars and was to have 5000 militia, together with the two 
battalions of Foix and Hainaut. 

It is clear enough that now, with a considerable force 
present, with a powerful fleet before the harbor, with 

160 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

4000 seasoned French soldiers on board, Sullivan might 
have gone at Newport pell-mell and won it. Quick 
action was the prerequisite to success. Sullivan no 
doubt contemplated such a move in his inspired mo- 
ments; but there was another side to the case. How 
many men might he lose by haste ? It was like marrying. 
He would repent at leisure. No, he must assemble his 
New England militia and go at his task in a soldierly 
manner. He accordingly requested d'Estaing to give 
him nine days' grace. He might have known that, with 
spies and couriers a-plenty, Pigot would in the meantime 
beg Clinton for speedy succor. The Comte d'Estaing 
did not relish the delay, Scurvy had broken out; 
water was scarce; other matters were amiss; but he 
politely acquiesced. La Fayette was of great service 
to him in making known the requirements of the fleet ; 
in interpreting and translating; and welding the two 
forces which, though politically allied, were by no 
means in touch at all points. He was exceedingly 
active. That he won the Comte's confidence was not 
strange. M. d'Estaing, writing to the Ministry, said 
of La Fayette : " No one is in a better position than 
this young officer to become an additional bond of unity 
between France and America. He enjoys here the 
highly merited consideration which is due to his zeal, 
his gallantry and his wisdom." 

Sullivan, sad to say, now offended the French. 
He had fixed upon August 10 as the date upon which 
the allies were to attack. Upon discovering that the 
enemy had abandoned the north end of Rhode Island 
he crossed on the ninth — a day too soon. News of 
this, says Tower, " struck the Comte d'Estaing with 
amazement. ... It aroused a storm of anger. 
. . . The Frenchmen began to look with suspicion 
upon their English-speaking friends as wilful, careless 
and unreliable. The Americans considered the French 
II 161 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

officers as oversensitive, excitable, and absurdly tena- 
cious of their scruples about things that were of no 
consequence." Amory in his " Life of Sullivan " 
declares that " D'Estaing was unreasonably offended 
He was unduly sensitive and punctilious." Colonel 
John Laurens, *' who appears not to have had a strong 
liking for La Fayette," was with the allies at the 
time — a very young man. He, too, notes the umbrage 
taken by the French ; and puts it upon the record that 
La Fayette stood up for the rights of his own people. 
Why not? It was to his honor that he did so. But 
big things were about to happen that would end the 
petty ones. M. d'Estaing began to land his sailors. 
" armed with bayonets made of the blades of cutlasses," 
his marines and his French infantry on Conanicut 
Island; but, even as they debarked British sails 
appeared off the bay. It was a formidable British fleet 
— thirteen ships of the line, seven frigates and other 
craft. At once d'Estaing re-embarked his men, ran the 
batteries and, having cleared for action, put to sea on 
the morning of the loth. Let Tower tell of the fight: 

" Upon his approach, the British fleet cut their 
cables and stood out under full sail, leaving behind 
many of their ships' boats, which, in their haste to 
get away, they had not stopped to pick up. All this 
took place, as La Fayette said, in describing it, ' in the 
most delightful weather in the world, and in sight of 
both the English and American armies. I was never 
so happy as upon that day.*^ And indeed it seemed as if 
the Comte d'Estaing had found at last the opportunity 
he so ardently sought, of measuring his strength with 
the British, and performing a brilliant action for the 
glory of France and for the cause of Independence in 
America. Lord Howe's fleet . . . continued its 
course under full press of canvas, in the direction of 
New York, with the French fleet pursuing throughout 

** " Correspondence de La Fayette," i, 214. Letter to the 
Due d'Ayen. 

162 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

that day and the ensuing night. The next day it became 
evident that the Conite d'Estaing was gaining the 
advantage of position, whilst at the same time he was 
overtaking the enemy. About four o'clock in the after- 
noon he gave orders for a general attack which Admiral 
Howe, who perceived that he could no longer escape it, 
was now preparing for, when suddenly the sea became 
rough and a gale arose of almost unexampled fury, 
which concealed the two fleets from each other in the 
darkness that accompanied it, separated them from 
each other, and beat upon them all night with such 
violence that it left them crippled and torn when day- 
light came, so that neither admiral could think of 
beginning the combat ; but each, occupied entirely with 
the welfare of his own fleet, took the best course pos- 
sible to bring his ships safely into port." 

Buffeted and broken, d'Estaing's fleet put back 
for Rhode Island, whence it was proposed to sail for 
Boston. Sullivan, through La Fayette, endeavored 
to shake the purpose of d'Estaing's officers, but without 
avail. The anchors were weighed August 21st. 

La Fayette, however, was not ready to admit that 
this joint expedition from which so much had been 
expected was a failure. He '* did not share with his 
countrymen a want of confidence in Sullivan." At 
the same time he of course refused to sign a round- 
robin of Sullivan's officers protesting against the fleet's 
departure. He was " incensed at Sullivan's conduct," 
and demanded that he should withdraw " certain objec- 
tionable words." His position was most uncomfort- 
able. Good sense, good humor, the keen desire to 
help America, not Great Britain, stood him in stead; 
and he rode off to Boston to see what he could do to 
set things right. He pushed on so fast as to cover 
seventy miles in seven hours. It was not so thrilling a 
ride as Paul Revere's ; but, really, it was a patriotic 
ride. In Boston, John Hancock and Dr. Cooper helped 
him to smooth out matters; and d'Estaing agreed to 

163 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

return to Newport with his fleet. Just then the news 
reached Boston of CHnton's arrival at Newport with 
a strong body of troops. Thereupon La Fayette " rode 
back as fast as he came." Too late to take part in the 
battle, he was in time to be of service in covering the 
retreat. He was given the command of a detachment at 
Bristol. Once more, however, did he hurry to Boston 
where trouble had arisen between the French and 
Americans. A French officer was killed. He success- 
fully made peace between the disputants, and from that 
time on all went well. 

The Tory gazettes sought to ridicule the French 
allies. C. H. Van Tyne says in " The Loyalists in the 
American Revolution " : 

" The whole unlucky career of the French fleet 
was watched by the Tories with great pleasure. The 
French Admiral, it was declared, had * not even Panta- 
gruel's luck, who conquered two old women and a duck.' 
La Fayette and his countrymen were described as the 
* frog-eating gentry now capering through your prov- 
inces ' and the Marquis was represented as amusing 
himself before the glass or taking snuff, and always 
bowing thirteen times — the exact number of the United 
States — when the * renowned Don Quixotto, draw 
Cansiro de Fayetteo ' was saluted by the Lieutenant- 
General of France, George Washington." ^^ 

Thus, La Fayette, happy enough when August 
opened, was by no means so at the beginning of Sep- 
tember. One cannot say that he was in sackcloth 
and ashes over the Newport denouement; was he ever 
quite downhearted — unless, perhaps, in his deep dun- 
geon, years after? But things had gone contrariwise. 
He was mortified, at least. Imagine, then, his surprise, 
his delight, when he received not only warm and 

"* Of his own choice, as well as from the English instinct 
in him, Washington had no love for France or confidence in 
her. M. de La Fayette alone knew how to gain his afiFection and 
his esteem. — M. Guizot, " Hist, of Engand," p. 346, vol. iii. 

164 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

commendatory letters from Washington, ^^ but a reso- 
lution of thanks from Congress. A load was off his 
mind at once. Come to think of it, he had done his 
best. So, for that matter, had the luckless d'Estain^. 
He wanted to go over many matters with the Comte ; 
therefore, he journeyed once more to Boston. He 
wished to discuss certain recent insults to France. 
There was one in particular that aroused fierce resent- 
ment. Lord Carlisle, one of the British Peace Com- 
missioners (William Eden and George Johnstone were 
the other two), had, in an address to Congress, accused 
France of " a perfidy too universally acknowledged to 
require any new proof.'* Perfidy ! perfidy ! We to-day 
tickle our tongues with the phrase " Perfidious Albion," 
but, to La Fayette, at that time, there was no such 
place as " Perfidious France." Perfidy stuck deep in 
the craw. 

Saratoga opened the eyes of George III, who told 
Lord North to try different measures. Hence Lord 
North's conciliatory scheme, and the Carlisle Com- 
mission. Frederick, Earl of Carlisle, who headed it, 
was *' a contemporary and schoolfellow of Charles 
Fox, and the sworn companion of his early scrapes 
and follies." He continued to mend his ways, says 
Trevelyan ; and, " in the eyes of his youthful kinsman, 
Lord Byron, the poet, was respectability, even pom- 
posity, personified." At the time in question, continues 
Trevelyan, " Carlisle seemed too slight and juvenile 
for a plenipotentiary; and the general opinion con- 
cerning him was summed up in the verdict that he was 
* a very fit commissioner for a treaty that never would 
be made.' " That he was a " fastidious aristocrat " 
offended many. In the imagination of the young gen- 
tlemen of Washington's family, he stood for the 

^ He burned some of Washington's letters, lest they 
should fall into other hands, and give the enemy clues. 

165 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

haughty lord who patronized as many mortals as he 
honored with his notice. In sooth, his lordship was 
a worthy man — a much abused man, it appears, since he 
was not in the confidence of the British ministry but 
a victim of its tergiversation. He had not been long 
in America when he discovered that he had come hither 
upon a fool's errand. Be that as it may, he had said 
things that had aroused La Fayette's knightly dander 
and La Fayette laid before d'Estaing a proposition 
to challenge the maligner of France. The Comte 
demurred ; grew anxious ; wrote twice to Washington 
about it. He did not want La Fayette killed. Wash- 
ington subscribed to this ruling. Such ideas as that 
of settling battle quarrels by duels were exploded, 
he said. However, an exchange of letters followed. 
La Fayette's was in French; Lord Carlisle's in Eng- 
lish. " I do not deign to refute your language, my 
Lord," wrote La Fayette, " but I am anxious to punish 
you for it. . . . M. de Gimat, a French officer, will 
make any arrangements, in my behalf, that may be 
agreeable to you. I have no doubt that General 
Clinton will assent to this for the honor of his fellow 
countrymen." Serious reply was difficult, wrote his 
lordship, with a fine tincture of irony. Still, he must 
invite attention to the fact that for his public acts 
he was responsible to his country and his King — not 
to an individual. The alleged " insult " was not of a 
private nature. " Therefore," said the Earl, in con- 
clusion, " I believe that all these national disputes 
will best be decided when Admiral Byron and the 
Comte d'Estaing meet each other." ^^ In after-life 

^^When the fleets met in the West Indies the British 
under Admiral Samuel Barrington so humbled the French, 
at first, that American observers were deeply distressed. 
Washington's spirits were at a low ebb. He had expected 
great things of the French ships. But at last d'Estaing struck 
Byron a great blow. If he had followed it up the victory 
would have been doubly valuable. 

i66 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

La Fayette admitted that Lord Carlisle had taken 
the right view. 

The Comte d'Estaing and La Fayette had many 
conferences in Boston. Fresh plans were discussed. 
The fleet was to sail for the West Indies f- but after 
that voyage it might be used in carrying out a grand 
plan for the conquest of Canada. La Fayette could not 
relinquish readily this fine scheme — it fascinated him. 
The fleet would enter the St. Lawrence. Three expe- 
ditions, one setting out from the Connecticut River line, 
another from Niagara, the third from Detroit, would 
converge, and, lo ! the work would be done. '' I can 
think of nothing," wrote La Fayette to d'Estaing, " but 
of the happiness of being united to you, of Flalifax sur- 
rendering, of St. Augustine taken, of the British islands 
on fire, and all confessing that nothing can withstand 
the French." 

His head filled with these thoughts, he asked Wash- 
ington, at Fishkill, on the Hudson, October 6th, to let 
him go to Philadelphia. There he won Congress to his 
plan, which was duly forwarded to Franklin in France. 
That nothing came of it did not matter. It was well 
intended, and well imagined. Other ways of working 
out independence would supersede it. Perhaps the real 
reason it was never executed was that Washington 
opposed it. In this one matter he and La Fayette took 
opposite ground. Washington had no wish to re-estab- 
lish the King of France on this continent; and in his 
long-headedness, he might have foreseen some such 
eventuality if French arms had reconquered Quebec. 

And now for home ! La Fayette had long contem- 
plated a return to France during the inactive season. 

^^ D'Estaing left Boston for Martinique, November 4th. 
On the same day a British fleet under Commodore William 
Hotham left New York, convoying 5000 British troops for the 
West hidies. The hostile fleets, sailing on parallel courses, 
were " each ignorant of the other's nearness." 

167 ' 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

While at Fishkill, on his way to Philadelphia, he had 
secured Washington's consent to ask Congress for a 
leave of absence. ^^ Congress gave it; and set apart 
the frigate Alliance to take him across the ocean. The 
gentlemen of his suite (except Pontgibaud) were to 
remain in America. The frigate was at Boston; and 
thither La Fayette started on October 26th. 

As he left Philadelphia a cold rain set in. He had 
undergone too much fatigue during recent months 
and was not up to the mark in bodily resisting power. 
He had been out in cold rains on various occasions; 
and thought himself inured. But it was not the case 
this time. He was chilled to the bone. Tower says : 

" He continued, however, to ride in the rain, and, 
in spite of the fever which soon laid hold of him, to 
take part in the festivities that were prepared for his 
reception by the people of every town through which 
he passed, strengthening himself as he imagined, for 
further effort, by frequent draughts of rum and wine 
and tea, until he had reached Fishkill, where he suc- 
cumbed to a violent illness. For many days his fever 
raged so that his condition gave the greatest concern 
to those about him and the news of it spread through 
the country. Everywhere the people gave expression 
of their sympathy and regret, and especially in the 
Army there was the profoundest grief when it was 
reported that * the Marquis,' as La Fayette was always 
familiarly called, * the soldier's friend/ was going to 
die. General Washington, whose headquarters were 
but eight miles away from the place where he lay, went 
every day to ask for him . . . and frequently 
went away with a sorrowing heart. La Fayette him- 
self believed that his end had come." 

^^ " He was by no means backward in asking favors. He 
pressed for a command, and when about to sail for Europe 
sought to obtain from Congress a written promise that if taken 
by the enemy he could be exchanged for one of the British 
generals captured at Saratoga." — " The Administration of the 
American Revolutionary Army," by Louis Clinton Hatch. 

168 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

The man who saved him was Dr. John Cochran, 
Surgeon-General of the Continental Army. Three 
weeks found the worst over. He began to mend, and, in 
December, accompanied by Dr. Cochran (affectionately 
known among Revolutionaiy soldiers as " Bones " 
Cochran), he resumed his journey to Boston, whence 
he sailed for Brest on the nth of January, 1779. 

The Alliance was a prime Continental frigate of 
thirty-two guns. She had just been built at Salisbury 
on the Merrimac. The commander was a Frenchman 
in the seivice of Congress, Captain Pierre Landais, of 
St. Malo. But it was understood that " the ship was 
under the orders of M. de La Fayette and the captain 
was to land him wherever he wished." The Chevalier 
de Pontgibaud, who sailed with La Fayette, says in 
his Memoirs :^* 

** The port of Boston was then frozen, and we were 
obliged to cut a passage for the ship through the ice. 
The wind was extremely violent, though favorable. 
We put up our mainsail only and that alone took us 
along at the rate of ten knots an hour. There were 
many French officers on board, amongst others M. de 
Raimondis, the Captain of the Cccsar, who had lost 
his right arm in the last naval battle. Off the Banks 
of Newfoundland we were assailed by a terrible tem- 
pest. It lasted so long and grew so much worse, that 
first inquietude, then alarm, and at last consternation, 
seized everybody on board. M. de La Fayette was 
invariably very ill at sea: he was down on the sick 
list. He often sent me to enquire after old Captain 
Raimondis, who suffered much pain from his ampu- 
tation — sufferings which were increased by the heavy 
rolling of the ship. The old sailor did not take a hope- 
ful view of the situation ; he told me that he had never, 
in all his voyages, met with such a fearful tempest. I 
carried these remarks back to M. de La Fayette, but 
to comfort him, as well as myself, told him that I 

" " A French Volunteer of the War of Independence," 
translated and edited by Robert B. Douglas. 

169 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

thought the state of health of Captain Raimondis must 
necessarily influence his mind and make matters look 
worse than they really were. M. de La Fayette lay on 
his back and soliloquized on the emptiness of glory and 
fame. ' DiahleT he said philosophically, 'I have 
done well certainly. At my time of life — barely twenty 
years of age — with my name, rank, and fortune, and 
after having married Mile, de Noailles, to leave every- 
thing and serve as a breakfast for codfish ! ' For my 
own part I was better off ; I had nothing to lose and no 
one to regret me. I went back to the old sailor. He 
occupied a cabin on the deck below that where M. de 
La Fayette was lodged, so that in going from one to 
the other I met with frequent falls, and had plenty of 
bruises to show as a result of my message. It was 
impossible to keep one's feet, owing to the continual 
heavy seas which struck the ship. There was some 
talk of cutting the masts. [She did lose her main- 
top.] One of my comrades, M. de N , became so 

excited that I saw him charge his pistols, so as to 
shoot himself rather than be drowned. This unlucky 
fellow had a mania for suicide. In 1792, after the 
loth of August, he was an officer in the ' Constitutional 
Guards,' and when the patriots came to drag him away 
to the Abbaye, he escaped from their hands by passing 
his sword through his body." 

The tempest lasted three days out of the twenty- 
three days of the voyage, during which the Alliance 
captured two British vessels. But the great event 
of this memorable maiden-run of the new frigate 
occurred on February 2d. It was nothing less than 
a mutiny. *' Whilst we were at dinner," says the Cheva- 
lier de Pontgibaud, " thinking no more of bad weather 
but of France, from which we were now only some five 
hundred miles distant, one of the crew entered and 
asked to speak to M. de La Fayette. He took the 
Marquis on one side and told him a good deal in a 
few words, namely, that the English sailors had laid 
a plot to kill us, take possession of the vessel and turn 
her head for England. The time set for the rising was 

170 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

five o'clock when the English sailors came off their 
watch. Arms were hidden in the hammocks." The 
Chevalier continues: 

*' There was not a moment to be lost. We num- 
bered in all fourteen officers. We began by securing the 
man who had warned us, and Duplessis-Mauduit (the 
Red Bank hero) stood over him with a cocked pistol in 
his hand. Some of us then went to fetch the bravest 
and trustiest of our sailors . . . thirty of us went 
down between decks. The ringleader was seized and 
bound before he was awake. . . . The scoundrels 
were so taken by surprise that they made no resistance. 
They had noticed amongst the baggage of M. de La 
Fayette some very heavy cases which they supposed 
contained treasure." 

*' The difficulty of recruiting ships' crews '^^ for 
the regular naval service, chiefly due to the superior 
attractions of privateering," says Gardner W. Allen 
in " A Naval Hi&tory of the American Revolution," 
** had led to the practice, in some cases, of enlisting 
British prisoners, who were willing in this manner to 
escape confinement. In the case of the Alliance the 
disinclination of Americans to sail under a French cap- 
tain had increased the difficulty and accordingly many 
British subjects were taken. The unreliable character 
of such crews is illustrated in this instance. Among 
the ringleaders of the conspiracy were John Savage, 
Master-at-Arms, and William Murray, Sergeant of 
Marines. Murray confessed,'"''' saying that Savage 
and he, with seventy more, had agreed to take the 
ship and carry her into some port of England or Ire- 

^^ La Fayette was against impressment. " The Massa- 
chusetts State Government," says Edgar S. Maclay, in his 
" History of the Navy," vol. i, " attempted to coerce sailor 
to serve in the Alliance in 1779, when that ship was com- 
missioned to convoy La Fayette to France, but in deference 
to the wishes of the French patriot, the authorities filled out 
the crew by other means." 

^'N. E. Independent Chronicle, April 29, 1779. 

171 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

land and force one of the lieutenants to take command 
of her. He said the plan they had laid to take her 
was that they were to divide themselves into four 
divisions, the first to take the magazine, the other 
three at the same time to force the cabin, wardroom, 
and quarter-deck, then to take command of the arm- 
chests, and in case of opposition they were to point 
the forecastle guns aft and fire them, the guns being 
nine-pounders and all loaded. The party that was to 
go to the magazine were to kill the gunner, carpenter 
and boatswain; the other punishments for the other 
officers and French gentlemen were thus : Captain Lan- 
dais was to be put in irons and sent in the cutter, 
without victuals or drink ; the lieutenants were to walk 
overboard on a plank from the ship's side, unless they 
should take charge of her and navigate ithe ship into 
England ; the Marine officers and the doctor were to be 
hanged, quartered and hove overboard; the sailing- 
master was to be tied up to the mizzen-mast, scarified 
all over, cut to pieces and hove overboard. La Fayette 
was to be put in irons, and sent to England." 

Thirty-eight of the mutineers were confined in 
irons on shore to await trial. Finally they were sent 
back to America, in small numbers, on different vessels, 
but it is not stated whether they were tried upon 
their arrival or what became of them. They certainly 
were bloody-minded enough to bear watching on a 
long probation. 

Nor may we leave the subject without an additional 
word concerning Pierre Landais, who made his mark in 
naval affairs, even if it were an unenviable one. '* Lan- 
dais," says AUen,^' " had a temperament which made 
impossible anything like efficient cooperation between 
himself and either superiors or inferiors." Under 

" " A Naval History of the American Revolution," by 
Gardner W. Allen, 2 vols. 

172 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

John Paul Jones ^^ he was insubordinate. ** His erratic 
conduct " while bringing Arthur Lee back to America 
was so pronounced that he was '' forcibly relieved of 
command." He was court-martialed, and at Boston, 
November 20, 1781, sentenced "to be broke and ren- 
dered incapable of service in the navy thereafter." ^^ 
La Fayette went first to Versailles; then to Paris. 
Joy at his return to the Hotel de Noailles was shorn of 
fullness by recollection of the death of Henriette. 
Anastasie was seen by her father for the first time. It 
must have amused the returned son-in-law when he 
noted the hearty and appreciative welcome of the erst- 
while unapproving due d'Ayen. " I could not but 
recall the attitude of my country, of America, and 
my own situation, at the time when I went away," says 
La Fayette, " as I saw the port of Brest recognize 
and salute the flag that was now flying on my frigate." 
So, too, the due d'Ayen gave him salutation, as did a 
goodly part of that France which kept itself au courant 
with public events and romantic circumstances. For 
the sake of appearances, Versailles held him off a while, 
as one who had disobeyed the King. He was under 
arrest " in the bosom of his family." Friends thronged 
the Hotel de Noailles. Queen Marie Antoinette, 
unable to receive him, nevertheless '* happened " to 
drive by as he was walking in the palace gardens and 
summoned him to her. Soon he wrote to Louis, who 



" Later La Fayette had occasion to write a long letter to 
the Admiralty Board at Philadelphia on the subject of Paul 
Jones and Landais. Arthur Lee appears to have caught a 
Tartar in this captain. 

'^ Franklin wrote to Landais : " I think you so impudent, 
so litigious, so quarrelsome a man , . . that peace and good 
order, and consequently the quiet and regular subordina- 
tion so necessary to good success, are, where you preside, im- 
possible." If he had twenty ships-of-war he would not give 
one to Landais. — Maclay, " History of the Navy," vol. i. 

For other references to Landais, see " The Life and Let- 
ters of John Paul Jones," by Mrs. Reginald De Koven, 2 vols. 

173 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

had a talk with him ; and " gave him his hberty, with a 
' rcprimandc douce.' " In his " Memoirs," La Fayette 
says : " Li the midst of the whirl of excitement by which 
I was carried along, I never lost sight of our Revolu- 
tion, the success of which still seemed to me to be 
extremely uncertain : accustomed to seeing great pur- 
poses accomplished with slender means, I used to say to 
myself that the :ost of a single fete would have 
equipped the army of the United States, and in order 
to provide clothes for them I should gladly have 
stripped the palace of Versailles, as M. de Maurepas 
had already said. ... I had the honor of being 
consulted by all the ministers, and, what was a great 
deal better, of being kissed by all the women." Both 
Maurepas and Vergennes had more in them than 
Thomas Carlyle allows in his " French Revolution." 
*' The ablest man I knew," wrote Horace Walpole, "' was 
the old Comte de Maurepas." Trevelyan's studies left 
Maurepas and Vergennes in his mind as true states- 
men — dangerous foes of England. Such were the 
powerful ministers who welcomed La Fayette to court, 
in order that they might obtain first-hand informa- 
tion of men and measures in America. If he wanted to 
see them, they quite as much wanted to see him. Nor 
need we imagine that the wise old American, whose 
watchword was ca Ira long before it became that of his 
French friends and followers, threw any obstacles in 
the way of the hero of the time. On the contrary, he 
saw that his own unending labors in behalf of America 
would be helped along by this heaven-sent enthusiast. 
Tower ^^ thinks that La Fayette's letter of February 
14th to the Comte de Vergennes in which " an expedi- 
tion " is mentioned, refers to the proposed descent by 
John Paul Jones upon the coast of England. Possibly 

^ Tower's " La Fayette in the American Revolution," vol. 
ii, p. 58. 

174 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

so, or possibly it refers to the Canadian expedition. 
La Fayette had sailed from Boston without learning 
of the abandonment of the d'Estaing-La Fayette enter- 
prise. The other' was a grand carry-the-war-i;nto 
Africa scheme — the Africa being '' Merrie England " 
itself, a most outrageous conception, of course, from 
the Briton's point of view. The Alliance was retained 
at Brest, by Dr. Franklin's order, and put under the 
command of Captain John Paul Jones, who also had 
three French vessels. La Fayette was to go along ; and 
between them they were to ** attack Liverpool, Lan- 
caster, Bristol, Bath and Whitehaven." The force was 
to consist of 15,000 infantry, six pieces of artillery and 
some cavalry. Tribute was to be levied upon the larger 
towns and " the proceeds of their undertaking were to 
be sent to the United States to help equip and clothe 
the army." Tower, who gives a list of letters bearing 
on the expedition, says that it was abandoned " in favor 
of a larger enterprise, by which it was intended to 
make a descent upon England with the combined forces 
of France and Spain. Captain Paul Jones put to sea, 
however, and in the course of his cruise he fought the 
celebrated engagement on the 226. of September, 1779, 
between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis." 

But La Fayette had plenty to do. It was a busy 
year with him.^^ In the first place, he was advanced 
in the French army. He was given the King's Dra- 
goons at Saintes. Again he was deep in affairs at Ver- 
sailles. As we have noted, Vergennes, who had 
opposed him in the old days, now invited his coopera- 
tion. Interviews were frequent, and many letters 

®^ Vol. ii of Charlemagne Tower's '' La Fayette in the 
American Revolution " devotes two chapters to this year in 
La Fayette's life. His sources are "Memoires de ma Main." 
" Correspondence de La Fayette, Etats-Unis, with Supple- 
ments," Doniol, B. F. Stevens's " Fac-similes," Wharton's 
" Diplomatic Correspondence," Sparks and Franklin. 

175 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

passed between them. How could England best be 
invaded? How could a rebellion in Ireland best be 
fomented ? Could not the King of Sweden be induced 
to lend America some of his ships of the line ? Would 
it not be possible to arrange with Holland for a con- 
siderable loan to the United States? These were some 
of the large questions brought up and handled. " For- 
tune," says Tower, " seemed to indulge La Fayette 
extraordinarily at this period of his life, by throwing 
within his reach the opportunity which he required to 
attain his purpose. He possessed a remarkable faculty 
for recognizing advantages of this kind when they 
offered themselves. He seized the present one and held 
to it with the tenacity of purpose which had carried 
him through in his first attempt to go to America 
and had made the success of his career." Probably 
he prolonged his stay in France because he saw that 
he was doing America more good than would be pos- 
sible if he were in camp by the Hudson. It was Premier 
Floridablanca of Spain who had urged France "to stir 
up Ireland. La Fayette selected Edward Bancroft ®^ 
(whom he had known in Deane's day) to go to Ireland 
as an emissary. Dr. Bancroft reported that *' the fruit 
was not ripe " ; and so no rebellion was fomented in 
Erin. But there were other plans on foot and these 
gave La Fayette little leisure during March, April, 
May and June. " The afifairs of America I shall ever 
look upon as my first business whilst I am in Europe," 
he .wrote to the President of Congress by the hand of 
M. de la Luzerne, who was to go to Philadelphia in 
place of M. Gerard de Rayneval, quitting on account of 

^'This Edward Bancroft (b. Westfield, Mass., Jan. 9, 1774; 
d. Margate, Eng., Sept. 8, 1821) was doctor, writer, naturalist, 
novelist and politician. " Franklin's spy," he was called. He 
was accused of attempting to burn Portsmouth dockyard. 
Nevertheless, in 1785, Parliament gave him special rights in 
the use of oak bark in calico printing. 

176 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

the ill effect of the climate upon his health. In this let- 
ter, dated "St. Jean d'Angely, near Rochefort," La Fay- 
ette gives a modest account of his activities, adding: 
" I hope to leave this place before long, in order to play 
a more active part and come nearer the common enemy." 
And to Washington he wrote.: '* I have just received, my 
dear General, an express from court, with orders to 
repair immediately to Versailles. There I am to meet 
M. le Comte de Vaux, Lieutenant-General, who is 
appointed to command the troops intended for an expe- 
dition. In the army I shall be employed in the capacity 
of aide-Marcchal-gcncral des logis, which is, in our 
service, a very important and agreeable place, so that I 
shall serve in the most pleasing manner, and shall be 
in a situation to know everything and to render ser- 
vices." This was the joint expedition of France and 
Spain against England. Troops were already assem- 
bled at various points on the Channel. La Fayette 
accompanied the Comte de Vaux to Versailles, where, 
on June 21, the King gave Vaux his instructions. There- 
after La Fayette was at Havre until the abandonment 
of the expedition because of the non-arrival of the 
fleet from the south under the Comte d'Orvilliers. It 
came too late — a hundred ships of the line and frig- 
ates ; it could not convoy the troops across the Channel 
because of the powerful British squadron assembled 
at Portsmouth. La Fayette simply said that he would 
" grieve in silence." It was a Newport fiasco on a 
grander scale. 

So now La Fayette had come to the largest of 
his propositions. He remembered Havre with pleasure 
all his days, for while he was there, with the Comte de 
Vaux, the sword Congress had voted him came ; and 
especially because the great expedition to America was 
then first regarded as something tenable, something 
practicable, something necessary. He had convinced 
12 177 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the ministry that it was frittering away its strength 
by confining the naval war to the West Indies. The 
thing to do was to send a great combined army and 
navy to cooperate with Washington. He was soon 
writing to Vergennes and Vergennes to him. The 
French and American archives ^^ contain much data 
on the subject of sending ships and soldiers to this 
side of the sea. Maurepas encouraged La Fayette, and 
in a general way assented to his propositions. These 
took definite shape in a memorandum of January 25, 
1780, addressed to the Comte de Maurepas. *** 

From this time on the expedition was assured. 
Not only so, but '' it immediately assumed a character 
of the highest importance " when its leader was fixed 
upon — Lieutenant-General the Comte de Rochambeau. 

Rochambeau's appointment was announced on the 
9th of March ; on the nth La Fayette boarded the frig- 
ate Hermione, Captain Latouche, at the Isle d'Aix. M. 
Latouche said of his now distinguished passenger : " I 
consider it a favor that an opportunity has been given 
me to prove the high esteem in which I hold him." 
Sailing from Rochelle, March 14th, La Fayette was 
nearly six weeks at sea. He had plenty of time to read 
the official memorandum regulating his conduct as a 
representative of the French government, as well as 
his private instructions.^^ The Hermione, flying the 
French flag, sailed into Boston harbor on the 28th of 
April. Word that she was coming in circulated 
throughout the city, and soon the wharves were lined 
with people. As La Fayette landed, he was given a 
demonstrative welcome by a crowd that followed him 

®^ See Tower, Doniol, Sparks's " Franklin," Stevens's " Fac- 
similes," Wharton's " Correspondence," "CorrespOndance de 
La Fayette " and " Memoires de Rochambeau." 

•" For a translation of this letter to Maurepas, see Tower, 
vol. ii, Appendix E, pp. 499-504. 

"For these documents in English, see Tower, vol. ii, 
pp. 95 and 99. 

178 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

to the dwelling of the Governor, John Hancock, whose 
greeting was as pronounced as his signature to the 
Declaration of Independence. La Fayette at once sent 
off a letter to Washington at Morristown, who in his 
reply broke away from his wonted epistolary restraint 
and grew almost ebullient. No father was ever more 
affectionate to a son than Washington to his " young 
soldier." " I most sincerely congratulate you upon 
your safe arrival in America," he said, '* and shall 
embrace you with all the warmth of an affectionate 
friend, when you come to headquarters, where a bed 
is prepared for you." La Fayette slept in that bed 
on the night of the loth of May, but not until he had 
delighted his chief with a full account of his success 
in France. On the i6th, Lafayette paid his respects 
to Congress in Philadelphia; but Congress was not 
told of the coming of General Rochambeau and Admiral 
de Ternay. Everything of that sort was secret. 
Nevertheless, some curious impressions got abroad. 
It was suspected that Arnold, whom Washington 
trusted, tried to betray the Franco-American plans 
with respect to the expedition. At any rate, Sir Henry 
Clinton's information was that Canada would be 
attacked by Rochambeau. This distinguished soldier 
arrived with his army at Newport, R. I., on board 
M. de Ternay's ships, July loth, and on the 25th 
La Fayette greeted the commanders in behalf of Gen- 
eral Washington. But there was considerable excite- 
ment on all sides on account of an expected British 
attack at Newport. Admiral Graves had arrived in 
those waters, had joined his fleet to that of Admiral 
Arbuthnot, and the hostile ships were cruising just 
outside. Sir Henry Clinton had intended to cooperate 
but had turned back. Heath was in command at New- 
port, and it w^as thought best that La Fayette should 
remain there ; but when the danger had died down and 

179 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the negotiations with the French commanders had 
been completed, he returned to headquarters, now 
removed to Peekskill. Upon his arrival in camp he 
found that Washington had assigned him to the com- 
mand of a corps of light infantry ^^ made up of six 
battalions, in two brigades, under General Hand and 
General Poor. On August 7th La Fayette found him- 
self at the head of this " flying army " ; but he was 
not so busy in the field that he could not write his 
reports of what befell him at Newport. These strictures, 
it seems, so irritated the Comte de Rochambeau that he 
was on the point of quarrelling with his young country- 
man. Fortunately each suddenly ceased to sand his ink 
with gunpowder. Indeed they wisely ended their con- 
troversy in warm friendship. Rochambeau was full of 
trouble. His second division was still in France — 
blockaded at Brest by thirty British ships. At a coun- 
cil held by Washington on September 6th it was 
decided not to attack New York until the arrival of the 
second division. La Fayette attended this council, 
as he did the Hartford conference (which sent Laurens 
on his secret mission) on the 20th. This must have 
been one of the greatest occasions in La Fayette's life. 
It gave him pleasure to introduce such a man as 
Washington to the French chevaliers. Seeing that 
almost every one present became famous, either in the 
American Revolution or in the French Revolution, 
MM. de Rochambeau, father and son ; MM. de Ternay, 
de Fersen, de Damas and Mathieu Dumas — we find ma- 
terial here for a great historical painting. Count Jean 
Axel de Fersen, aide-de-camp of General de Rocham- 

*'* According to Tower, " the corps was distinguishable 
by the black and white plumes which La Fayette had had made 
for his men." He sent to France for presents for them. One 
of their flags showed a cannon bearing the device Ultima 
ratio; a second flag " bore a crown of laurel joined with a civic 
crown, with the device " No other." 

180 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

beau, in a letter to his father dated Newport, i6th 
October, 1780, thus tells of the Hartford meeting: 
" During our stay in Hartford the two Generals and 
the Admiral were closeted together all day; the Mar- 
quis de La Fayette assisted as interpreter, as General 
Washington does not speak French nor understand it. 
They separated quite charmed with one another, at 
least they said so." It was on leaving Hartford that 
General Washington discovered Arnold's treachery. ^^ 
La Fayette was with Washington all through the 
peculiarly painful Arnold-Andre period. Arnold was 
a hero with a grievance. No public character one can 
think of was without a few nettles in his shoes during 
the Revolution. Arnold suffered some ill-treatment; 
but, in the main, was his own assassin. His life in 
Philadelphia was of the sort to spoil him. The Shippens 
were rich Tories, and he was successful in winning 
the smiles, the love, the hand of Margaret (" Peggy ") 
Shippen, a lovely girl, belle of the Meschianza. 
Unluckily he was a spendthrift, lived like a lord, got 
in debt, quarreled with his betters, and was up before 
a Committee of Congress and a court-martial. He 
was acquitted ; but the acquittal left him quarrelsome', 
morose, and revengeful. By intrigue, he secured the 
post at West Point. It was his deliberate purpose to 
deliver the Hudson valley to Clinton, and thereby dis- 
rupt the Union. What Burgoyne had failed to do by 
force, he engaged to do by the blackest of all betrayals. 
Washington was to be lured to ruin. On the night 
of the 2 1 St of September, Major Andre, in his British 
uniform, but cloaked, and masquerading thus as '* John 
Anderson," was taken ashore by Joshua Hett Smith, 
a lawyer, from the sloop-of-war Vulture. Arnold 

^^ " The French Army in the Revolutionary War. Count 
de Fersen's Private Letters." Magazine of American History, 
vol. XXV, pp. 55, 156. This is the Fersen who became devoted 
to Marie Antoinette, as we shall see later on in this book. 

181 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

met him at a traitor's tryst among the riverside forest 
trees, Long Clove, below Haverstraw, and the two 
planned their dark deed. Disobeying his instructions, 
Andre at daybreak went with Arnold to Smith's house 
not far away. While they were there, the Vulture 
being fired upon, dropped down the river. Arnold 
hastened back to his post; Andre, provided with a 
horse and a pass, sought to return by land to New 
York. On the way, he mistook three militiamen — 
John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart — 
for Tory marauders (" Cowboys " they were called) ; 
and revealed himself as a British officer. Later, he 
offered a thousand pounds to be set free; but the 
captors took him to Lieutenant-Colonel Jameson, who 
in spite of papers telling of the treason-pact that had 
been found in Andre's boot, sent him, with a letter, 
toward West Point. Major Benjamin Tallmadge, 
more patriotically keen, brought Andre back, but let the 
letter go its way until it was in Arnold's hands.. 

In passing from camp at Tappan to the Hartford 
Conference on the i8th, Washington and La Fayette 
had met Arnold at King's Ferry, who showed his 
chief a letter asking that Colonel Beverly Robinson 
of the Robinson House, opposite West Point, be per- 
mitted to go on board the Vulture in Haverstraw Bay, 
a little ways below. Washington, altogether unsus- 
picious as to Arnold's loyalty, told him to refuse the 
request. It was upon the return of the two generals 
from Hartford, a week later, that they came upon the 
Vulture sequel. La ^Fayette wrote from West Point, 
September 25, to the Chevalier de la Luzerne : 

"When I left you yesterday morning, M. le Cheva- 
lier, to come here to breakfast with General Arnold, 
we were very far from thinking of the event which 
I am now about to announce to you. You will shudder 
at the danger we have run. You will be astonished at 

182 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

the miraculous chain of accidents and circumstances 
by which we have been saved. But you will be more 
greatly surprised when you learn by what instrument 
this conspiracy was being carried on — Arnold ! That 
same man who had covered himself with glory by 
rendering valuable services to his country, had lately 
formed a horrid compact with the enemy. 

*' When we left Fishkill we were preceded by one 
of my aides-de-camp and General Knox's aide, who 
found General and Mrs. Arnold at table, and who sat 
down to breakfast with them. During that time two 
letters were brought to General Arnold giving him 
information of the capture of the spy. He ordered his 
horse to be saddled, wxnt to his wife's room and told 
her he was lost, and directed one of his aides-de-camp 
to say to General Washington that he had gone to 
West Point and should return in an hour. ... I 
cannot describe to you, M. de Chevalier, to what degree 
I am astounded by this piece of news. ... I would 
give anything in the world if Arnold had not shared 
our labors with us, and if this man, whom it pains me 
to call a scoundrel, had not shed his blood for the 
American cause. My knowledge of his personal cour- 
age led me to expect that he would decide to blow 
his brains out (this was my first hope) ; at all events, 
it is probable he will do so when he reaches New York, 
whither the English sloop proceeded immediately upon 
receiving Arnold on board." . . The unhappy 

Mrs. Arnold did not know a word of this conspiracy; 
her husband told her before going away that he was 
flying never to come back, and he left her lying uncon- 
scious. When she came to herself, she fell in fright- 
ful convulsions, and completely lost her reason. We 
did everything to quiet her, but she looked upon us as 
the murderers of her husband, and it was impossible 
to restore her to her senses. The horror with which 
her husband's conduct has inspired her, and a thousand 
other feelings, make her the most unhappy of women. 
P. S. — She has recovered her reason this morning, 
and, as you know, I am on very good terms with her, 
she sent for me to go to her chamber. General Wash- 
ington and everyone else here sympathize warmly with 
this estimable woman, whose face and youthfulness 

183 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

make her so interesting. She is going to Philadelphia ; 
and I implore you, upon your return, to use your 
influence in her favor. It would be exceedingly pain- 
ful to General Washington if she were not treated with 
the greatest kindness. . . . We are certain that 
she knew nothing of the plot." 

When La Fayette heard of Andre's capture, he said : 
" I hope he will be hung; for he is a man of influence 
in the English army, and his distinguished social rank 
will act as a warning to spies of less degree." 

With these thoughts on the subject, it is not strange 
that he signed the finding of the court-martial in 
Andre's case. After the execution, which was at 
Tappan, October 2, La Fayette, addressing Mme. de 
La Fayette, wrote of him : " He was a very interesting 
man ; he conducted himself in a manner so frank, so 
noble, and so delicate that I cannot help feeling for 
him an innocent pity." 

La Fayette originated and outlined a plan for a bold 
descent upon Clinton on Manhattan; but Washington 
deemed the risk altogether too great. We have a good 
description of the camp of La Fayette's Light Infantry 
at Totohaw, or Second River, in New Jersey, seven 
miles from Washington's headquarters at Tappan, by 
the Chevalier de Chastellux. This officer was serving 
as a Major-General under Rochambeau. La Fayette's 
soldiers, he says, '' made a good appearance ; " they 
" were better clothed than the rest of the army — the 
uniforms were smart and military, and each soldier 
wore a helmet made of hard leather, with a crest of 
horse-hair." He added : *' The officers are armed with 
espontoons, or rather with half-pikes, and the sub- 
alterns with fusils; but both are provided with short 
and light sabres, brought from France, and made a 
present of to them by M. de La Fayette." The tents 
were formed in two ranks. They had good chimneys 

184 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

on the outside. He rode over to Tappan. La Fayette 
was in conversation with a tall man, five feet nine 
inches high [five feet ten and a half], of noble and 
mild countenance. It was the General himself.'"^ 
Returning " we arrived wet at Marquis de La Fayette's 
quarters, where I warmed myself with pleasure, par- 
taking, from time to time, of a large bowl of grog, 
which is stationary on his table and is presented to 
every ofiicer who enters." 

General Mathieu Dumas, describing a scene at 
Rochambeau's headquarters during the autumn of 
1780 when Washington and his staff were entertained, 
writes : " I was particularly impressed by the marks 
of affection which the General displayed for his pupil, 
and son of adoption, the Marquis de La Fayette. 
He watched him with complacency as they sat oppo- 
site each other at table and listened to all he said 
writh visible interest." 

La Fayette entertained many of his countrymen. 
Chastellux went to Philadelphia, w^here La Fayette 
joined him. Together they visited Brandywine battle- 
ground, and rode over Barren Hill. Meantime, Wash- 
ington had gone into winter quarters at New Windsor, 
where La Fayette, in company with Colonel John 

"^ Here is a memorandum made by Major Thomas Wood- 
bridge, of the Connecticut line {Magazine of American His- 
tory, September, 1882),: 

"Sunday, Aug. 26 [1780]. 

"At Gen'l Washington's table, a branch with 13 apples 
very curiously set together on it was sent in by Major Leaven- 
worth — the Gen'l ordered their bearer a bottle of rum for his 
recompense. The Gen'l handed it to the Marquis — while 
he was viewing it two dropped off. The General observed 
to the Marquis 'he had ruined two of our States.' As they 
were handed round they came to Gen'l Greene, at which all 
but four had come off. 'All gone' (says Gen'l Greene) 'but 
the 4 New England States — here is one smaller than the 
others' — that is Rhode Island.' 

" One among them (which was a withered one, exclusive 
of the 4) is dried up before it was grown (says the Marquis), 
which is Vermont." 

185 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Laurens, about to go to France, arrived on the nth 
of January, 1781. 

Now we come to the story of La Fayette's Virginia 
campaign. It is so long a story that, to tell it as it 
ought to be told, one should have much more space than 
is allowable here. But the main attendant circum- 
stances are no doubt already familiar. Only reminders 
need be given. The war had swung to the south ; and 
seemed to be going in favor of Great Britain. It had 
swung south because the British plan of occupying 
cities — and cities only — had failed. After three years 
the British held New York and Newport, and not 
much more. Then they abandoned Newport, " the best 
harbor in the world." King George was disgusted ; 
but as obstinate as ever. Lord North tried repeatedly 
to give up the government, but was not permitted to do 
so. The British ministry changed its policy. It planned 
attacks on Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. It 
was to be fire-and-sword on the coast, and rifle-and- 
tomahawk along the back-country line of the Appala- 
chies. France, Spain, Holland, most of Europe, were 
at " outs " with Britain ; but there were wheels within 
wheels, and only France was of great help. Spain 
wanted access to the Mississippi. A world drama, if 
not a " world war," was in process of panoramic 
unfolding before those who sat on high Olympus. 

In this effort by Sir Henry Clinton to roll up the 
rebels from the south, he sent Campbell by water and 
Prevost by land (from St. Augustine) against Georgia. 
D'Estaing sailed up from the West Indies to counter 
them. But his star was unlucky at Savannah, as else- 
where. In an attempted seizure by assault, Pulaski 
fell. The siege was raised. The Comte d'Estaing, 
whom Washington hourly expected off Sandy Hook, 
sailed for France. Then Clinton caught Lincoln in 
Charleston. Lincoln surrendered 5000 men; and 

186 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

much besides — including the very heart and hope of 
many despondent ones. All the Carolinas now seemed 
about to be overrun. The dashing and driving Banastre 
Tarleton had little to cross him as he ranged the land. 
And worse; for, when Washington had detached the 
Maryland and Delaware line and sent these picked 
troops — flower of the continent — southward under 
Kalb, along came Congress, and without consulting 
anybody placed the new army in the hands of Gates. 
Then followed fr'esh disaster — Camden battle; the 
heroic death of Kalb ®^ — and deep depression. 

When we wonder at these American reverses, as all 
of us do, it is but fair to look upon their excusatory 
side. Congress perverse? It had deteriorated since 
1774 and 1776, but the evils were inherent in the situa- 
tion. It had no power to raise money. It could only 
recommend that money be raised. Washington, for 
his part, could only write letters of appeal. His army 
was unprovided with necessaries. He could not help 
himself. Congress was guilty of a gross blunder in 
sending Gates south; yet we can understand why it 
did so. Many members had been seized with the 
illusion that Gates had won at Saratoga because of his 
military genius. Congress, wrong in this, was right 
in some other matters. It was by no means idle. 
Being unable to raise funds at home, it tried, in 
November, 1780, and thereafter, to borrow 25,000,000 
francs in specie. In January John Laurens was sent 
to Paris to urge the loan and ask for more ships and 
soldiers. '* He was guilty," says Sydney George 
Fisher,*^^ " of the old indiscretion John Adams was con- 

®^ Baron de Kalb was wounded eight times. He fell into 
the enemy's hands and died two days later. He was buried 
with the honors of war. His funeral was attended by all the 
British officers. — ^Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls, Sept., 1894. 

"* " The Struggle for American Independence," vol. ii, 
p. 448. 

187 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

stantly falling into; he would insist that France was 
indebted to America for helping her to cripple England 
as much as America was indebted to France for helping 
her to win independence." It was telling the truth 
with a bludgeon, in true American style. But, if he 
did not oil his words, he and others — many others — 
obtained large sums as well as " 7000 French troops, 
and the very large fleet under DeGrasse." ^^ 

However, for the time being, all that was not black 
in the situation was blue. Sir Henry Clinton had hit 
America " below the belt " in suborning one of the 
most brilliant Major-Generals — one of its heroes — 
who about this time entered into eternal infamy. True 
Americans everywhere were dumfounded by Arnold's 
treason, angered, depressed. The skies lowered for 
them. " They were not yet aware," says Sydney George 
Fisher, " of the change which Cornwallis and the Min- 
istry were working in Clinton's policy, and they could 
see only their own helplessness. No money was left; 
the paper currency was on the eve of complete worth- 
lessness; and the Congress was bankrupt. Washing- 
ton had not been able to fight a battle for two years. 
He had had to allow his men to maraud to feed them- 
selves, and he borrowed food from the French. He 
could barely keep together enough starving troops to 
hold the strategic position of the Hudson Highlands. 
' We seem to be verging so fast to destruction,' he said, 
* that I am filled with sensations to which I have been 
a stranger till within these three months.' " But " the 
defeat of Gates at Camden was really a patriot victory 
in disguise," adds Fisher, '' for it gave to Cornwallis 
an overweening confidence in himself and led the Min- 
istry to substitute his absurd plans for the more soldier- 
like and scientific policy of Clinton." Clinton regarded 

^^John Laurens gave his life finally. He was one of the 
last victims of the war. He was killed in a skirmish, August 
27, 1782, on the Combahee River. 

188 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

Charleston as the key to the South ; CoriiwalHs wished 
to cut loose from Charleston (as he soon did) and 
transfer the war to Virginia. B. F. Stevens, in the 
'* Clinton-Cornwallis Controversy," turns a strong 
light on a number of matters that were enigmatic to 
Americans at the time and to the earlier American 
historians. Clinton had quarreled with Lord George 
Germain and had gone to England to fight a duel with 
him ; but the affair had been amicably adjusted, and 
Clinton had been appointed to succeed Sir William 
Howe. Cornwallis, an aristocrat, was less under Clin- 
ton's control than he should have been. When he 
was in the Carolinas and Clinton in New York, com- 
munication was difficult. Not that Cornwallis wished 
to be directed by a superior. It suited him to be let 
alone. Clinton, it is said, would have resigned, in 
disgust, if he could have done so decently. He was 
disgusted with Admiral Arbuthnot. who was slow, self- 
centred, and non-cooperative ; and he was particularly 
wroth with the victor of Camden. Cornwallis, who 
gave Gates his quietus, did not realize that he himself 
was playing something of a Gates-game. He was, in a 
sense, Clinton's Gates. Still, in another sense, it is 
unfair, or at least incongruous to compare the two 
soldiers. Cornwallis had proved his genius in actual 
battle. But he now tried to deceive the British Minis- 
try as to the magnitude and effect of his successes in 
the South. He expected to be made Commander-in- 
Chief of the King's forces in America. Thus proceeded 
this grand tragi-comedy, involving empire, the liber- 
ties of a people, and the personal jealousies of ambi- 
tious men. 

Cornwallis would soon have other things to think 
about. Washington sent Greene south. Of him, John 
Fiske ^- says, that in every campaign since the begin- 

" " The American Revolution," Fiske, vol. ii, p. 250. 
189 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Tiing of the war he had been Washington's right 
arm, and for indefatigable industry, for strength and 
breadth of intelHgence, and for unselfish devotion 
to the public service, he was scarcely inferior to the 
Commander-in-Chief." 

It will take but a minute to run over Greene's 
work in the South. After the Gates disaster at Cam- 
den, August 1 6, 1780, came the setback to Cornwallis 
at King's Mountain, October 7th. All the time the 
heroic partisans — Sumter, Pickens, Marion, Davie and 
their kind, were active. Remembering that Andrew 
Jackson, then an orphan of thirteen, fought at Hanging 
Rock, we appreciate the sterling quality of this partisan 
material. To Cornwallis there were still catamounts in 
the timber. Tarleton had a taste of this when Morgan 
fought him at Cowpens, January 17, 1781 ; and, though 
his lordship claimed victory over Greene, at Guilford 
Court-house, March 15th, he nevertheless retreated 
toward the coast,"^^ encamping at Wilmington, N. C, on 
the 7th of April. Of Guilford fight, Ramsey said: 
" The British had the name ; the Americans the good 
consequences of victory." 

Cornwallis and Greene now turned their backs 
upon each other. Greene kept on southward. He 
meant to crush Lord Rawdon with whom Earl Corn- 
wallis had left some troops, and regain South Caro- 
lina. Bancroft quotes him as having said that he 
would " fight, get beaten and fight again." His Hob- 
kirk's Hill fight, April 28th, and his victory at Eutaw 
Springs, September 8th, forced the British to seek 
the cover of their fortifications; and, finally to retire 

" " There is the most conclusive evidence," said Fox, in 
the House of Commons, " that the war is at once impracticable 
in its object and ruinous in its progress. . . . Had our army- 
been vanquished, what course would they have taken? Cer- 
tainly, they would have abandoned their field of action, and 
flown for refuge to the seaside, precisely the measures the vic- 
torious army was obliged to take." 

190 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

upon Charleston. Cornwallis, for his part, now made 
the initial blunder of his new campaign, which began at 
Wilmington, April 25th, when he set out for Virginia, 
abandoning the pivotal post at Charleston which Clinton 
had told him to hold. 

As to British operations in Virginia: Clinton had 
sent General Alexander Leslie, October 16, 1780, with 
3000 men, who had occupied the south side of the James 
River but who, upon news of the King's Mountain 
disaster, had sailed for Charleston, November 24th, to 
join his forces with those of Cornwallis. Then, on 
December 30l;h, there appeared in Hampton Roads a 
British fleet, transporting an expedition under the 
command of Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold. 

Bitter indeed was the feeling stirred in the breasts 
of Americans by the turn-coat activities of the man they 
hated. It brought back to the flag many a patriot who 
had thought himself incapable of further exertion or 
sacrifices. It intensified feeling up and down the 
Continent. Clinton, who sent Colonels Dundas and 
Simcoe to watch Arnold, was hardly wise to flaunt 
his red rag before the bull unless he wished to make 
lively times for his unloved matador — Earl Cornwallis, 
who would soon be toiling northward along sandy roads 
to meet his fate. Arnold, wearing the uniform of a 
British General, at the head of 1600 regulars, lit the 
torch, in short order, in the old Pocahontas coun- 
try. He burned Richmond. But Steuben, at Peters- 
burg, threatened him, and he returned w^ith the tide 
to Portsmouth. 

News of Arnold's incursion reached Washington's 
headquarters at New Windsor in January. Now, it 
would be much more in keeping with the romance of 
the Revolution, not to speak of the eternal verities, if 
we could picture General Washington as becoming 
excited, even to the point of quick dramatic action, 

191 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

over the Arnold outrage and his despicable employ- 
ment. Possibly Washington did become indignant. 
But the truth is that, for some time, he had contem- 
plated sending an expedition southward. On Decem- 
ber 15th he wrote to the Comte de Rochambeau and 
the Chevalier de Ternay, at Newport, that a British 
expedition had embarked at New York; and asked 
French aid for operations in the South. Arnold, or 
no Arnold, it was the Franco-American cue to be 
alert. On the day this letter was dated. Admiral de 
Ternay died, and was succeeded by a more energetic 
commander, the Chevalier Des Touches, a " brigadier 
des armees Navales." Des Touches sent a few cruisers, 
under M. le Gardeur de Tilly, after Arnold. Washing- 
ton foresaw that M. de Tilly could accomplish little 
without the cooperation of a land force. Nevertheless 
the cruising Frenchman was at least lucky, in that he 
not only took some valuable prizes but hit upon papers 
containing Arnold's instructions. The situation was 
clearing. M. Des Touches now cooperated with 
Washington '* in a definite plan to entrap Arnold. 
And at this point, La Fayette, who probably had been 
in Washington's confidence all along, comes forward as 
a chief participant in the operations. We are in fact 
at the prologue of the Yorktown drama. 

It would be good to know just what Washington's 
thoughts were when he decided to assign La Fayette 
to this new duty. The instructions,'^ February 20th, 
read as though they had been talked over, and most 
likely they had. " You are to do no act whatever with 
Arnold," wrote Washington, *' that directly or by 
implication may screen him from the punishment due 
to his treason and desertion, which, if he should fall 

^*MS. Letter Books of Rochambeau, Library of Congress. 
Sparks' " Writings of Washington." Tower's " La Fayette," 
vol. ii, p. 219, ct seq. . 

^" Sparks' " Writings of Washington," vol. vii, p. 417. 
192 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

into your hands, you will execute in the most summary 
way." If Washington had foreseen that Cornwallis 
would be La Fayette's antagonist the assignment prob- 
ably would have been made just the same. La Fayette 
had a large view. He fully grasped the vital idea of 
campaigning in Virginia, which was to cooperate with 
the French navy. The strategy was to bottle up the 
British in the Chesapeake and pin them down at some 
spot where Continental troops could operate. He also 
understood that he must live on air if he could not 
obtain provisions ; and especially did he understand 
that he was to play the fox. Washington remembered 
with what skill La Fayette had stolen away with the 
last of the pickets at the time of the withdrawal from 
Rhode Island. 

La Fayette left camp at once. He made a feint 
as if he meant to attack Staten Island, but kept on across 
Jersey. His troops were New England Light Infantry, 
under Vose, Gimat and Reid. Gimat was his old 
aide-de-camp, now Lieutenant-Colonel. The New 
Englanders were joined by New Jersey troops, under 
Barber, at Morristown. This was in a heavy rain on 
February 24th, and the detachment now numbered 
1200. At Philadelphia, on the 26th, La Fayette sent 
Lieutenant-Colonel Gouvion on ahead to aid Steuben 
and to reconnoitre. Head of Elk was reached 
March 3d, three days before the detachment was due 
at that point. La Fayette w^as all activity. He wrote 
to Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, with 
respect to militia, artillery -horses and vessels ; to 
Steuben ; to Washington. Tower says that La Fayette 
was aware of a certain feeling against him among his 
own countrymen who " were jealous of his prestige in 
America." Some of them *' had begged the Comte 
de Rochambeau not to employ them under him." 
Others thought of him as a stripling. According to 
13 193 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Balch, the Due de Lauzun, however, was wilHng to go 
with him, " though he had made war as a Colonel long 
before La Fayette had left school." Tower dwells 
in detail on the bitterness shown in this connection. If 
La Fayette had been a smaller-minded man it is doubt- 
ful if he would have gone through the campaign. Not 
only must he be a fox, but he must be a Job. 

If there were dampers and drawbacks, there were 
inspirations, also. Washington wrote, giving him 
greater latitude. He was to keep an eye on Cornwallis. 
Again, from Newport, whither Washington had gone 
to hasten the departure of the French frigate, he wrote 
(March 8th) : "The whole fleet went out with a fair 
wind this evening about sunset." There is a picture 
for an artist in that sentence. And so beautiful a river 
is the Elk, that your artist might find another picture 
in a scene of the very next day when La Fayette was 
on board the Dolphin, off Turkey Point, with his fleet 
of transports and escort of bristling bay craft. Thus 
he reached Annapolis, whence he and his friend, the 
Comte de Charlus, son of the Marquis de Castries, 
Secretary of the French Navy, proceded in a small boat 
on a reconnoitering expedition as far as Yorktown. 
There were no signs of the French fleet. Perhaps if 
he had listened well, two days later — and the wind had 
been right — he might have heard a far-away booming 
of guns off the Virginia Capes. Arbuthnot had come 
up with the tardy French fleet and was driving it back 
to Newport. The British fleet had entered the Chesa- 
peake. Soon, March 21st, Arnold would be reinforced 
by a detachment under Major-General William Phillips, 
the old artillery expert, who had fought the French 
when La Fayette's father was alive. 

But for the time, La Fayette knew nothing of the 
naval battle. He went to Williamsburg and thence 
to the militia camp at Suffolk. General Muhlenberg 

194 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

went with him toward Portsmouth. He was told that 
a fleet had anchored inside the capes. He thought it 
that of M. Des Touches; but, by and by, word came 
from Major McPherson at Hampton that the ships 
were British. Swift were the changes in this spring- 
time game of war. La Fayette made the best of a dis- 
appointing situation. He struck out for Fredericks- 
burg, where he paid his respects to Mrs. Mary Washing- 
ton, mother of the General ; thence to Mount Vernon 
was a short journey; and, on April 4th, he was back 
again at Annapolis. There a surprise awaited him. 
Out in the Severn lay the Hope and the Monk, British 
boats. He was blockaded. But Commodore Nicholson 
chased these small craft off ; and La Fayette, slipping 
out of the river, with his fleet, passed on up to Head 
of Elk, where he landed one month to a day from the 
time of his departure. He had failed to trap Arnold — 
not through any fault of his own, but because M. Des 
Touches had not been quick enough in closing the 
mouth of the Chesapeake. Arnold would soon return 
to New York. Yet the expedition was of use to La Fay- 
ette. He had been on a grand scout. He had beheld 
broad rivers bright with the blue of heaven and 
sparkling in the sun. The bay and its noble estuaries, 
the embowered dwellings, the far-reaching forests with 
fragrant spring in their depths — these and other feat- 
ures of the great Chesapeake region had impressed 
themselves upon him. He had gone to school topo- 
graphically. He now knew the ground. A Virginia 
river — ah well ! it was no stream to leap over ; one 
would be lucky to shoot a cannon-ball across some of 
the great affluents of the Chesapeake. 

La Fayette was about to take up his march of 300 
miles for Washington's camp when a fresh order 
caused him to right-face about. " Turn your detach- 
ment to the southward," wrote Washington. La Fay- 

195 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ette was not only surprised but, strange to say, 
disappointed. He had it in his mind that the main 
army would do the fighting around New York that 
summer; and he wanted to be there. His troops from 
the north were unaccustomed to southern summers. 
They were in rags and unshod. 

But just as soon as he had grasped the full import 
of the order, which was that " Washington relied upon 
him to support Greene," he accepted the situation and 
threw himself into his new campaign. His corps left 
Head of Elk, April loth, crossed the Susquehanna at 
the Bald Briar in a windstorm on the 13th and arrived 
at Baltimore on the i8th. The first thing he did there 
was to borrow, in his own name, from the merchants 
of that city, 2000 guineas. With this money, he 
re-equipped his men. Thus did he- put them in better 
humor. Some of them had declared that they had 
rather " take a hundred lashes " than a trip South ; 
but now all went well with the detachment. A man who 
would buy them shirts and hunting-shirts, linen over- 
alls, stout shoes and other necessaries meant well by 
them, and they, in turn, would do well by him. He soon 
said of them : " These three battalions are the best 
troops that ever took the field ; my confidence in them 
is unbounded." As the first thing he had done in 
Baltimore was to borrow of the men, the last thing 
he did in that patriotic city — of John Eager Howard and 
Otho Williams — was to dance with the women. Short 
as his stay was, there was a ball in his honor. On the 
19th of April he led his troops toward the Potomac. 
He was at Alexandria on the 21st ; at Fredericksburg on 
the 25th; at Bowling Green on the 27th; at Hanover 
Court-house on the 28th, and reached Richmond on the 
29th. We string these dates across the pag^ to indi- 
cate the rapidity of his marches. It was characteristic 
of La Fayette throughout the Yorktown campaign. 

196 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

His mobility had much to do with his success. It was 
of a piece with other quaUties as now d-eveloped. 
Celerity, with cunning, marked his operations. Simcoe, 
telling of the movements of the British troops under 
the veteran Phillips, who had ascended the James, 
driven Steuben out of Petersburg, and hastened toward 
the Capital, says : ** Next morning they marched to 
Manchester, from whence they had a view of M. Fay- 
ette's army encamped on the heights of Richmond." 
La Fayette had come in the very nick of time. A day 
later, Phillips would have gained his objective point. 
As it was, Phillips felt so angry that he swore, 
fell back down the river to Brandon's, and La Fayette 
advanced to Bottom's Creek and the Chickahominy. 
Here the two wily ones watched each other. Often 
enough La Fayette saw the sky lit by a great tobacco 
fire. Simcoe speaks of La Fayette's " gasconading dis- 
position and military ignorance;" but La Fayette's 
letters, among the Washington papers, in the Depart- 
ment of State, show with great clearness that he knew 
exactly what he was about. If he gasconaded, it was to 
fool Phillips. With an inferior force he was holding 
in check a much greatf^r force which, but for him, 
might carry the torch, or join Cornwallis, or harry 
Greene. He was north of the James; Phillips was 
south. He was keeping Phillips out of Richmond and 
away from W^illiamsburg. Strategically, the young fox 
was outwitting the old artillerist. They were on 
ground destined to be overrun by blue and gray in a 
great war of the future. Here would be battle upon 
battle; and here in the swamps of Patrick Henry's 
Hanover, thousands upon thousands would fall. In 
his twists and turns, his marches and counter-marches 
in this campaign, La Fayette would traverse the fields 

197 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

sometime to be fought over by the Army of Northern 
Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. 

Not only was La Fayette keeping Phillips out of 
Richmond, he tried to prevent him from re-entering 
Petersburg. That was not an easy task. There was 
danger of venturing too far. His was the north side — 
at Wilton now; and it was the part of wisdom to 
stick to it. Besides he had got wind of the northward 
march of Cornwallis. That made him eager for the 
coming of Wayne, who was to make a southward 
march. Great battle was brewing. But, before the 
arrival of either Cornwallis or Wayne, typhoid fever 
attacked his antagonist. General Phillips ^^ died of 
that disease on the 13th of May; and Arnold succeeded 
to the command of his 2400 troops. La Fayette had 
honored the flag of truce when sent by Phillips ; he 
scorned it when Arnold sent it. That traitor's day 
was done, however, for Cornwallis arrived at Peters- 
burg on the 20th of May. Avery tells us that " Jeffer- 
son offered a reward of 5000 guineas for Arnold's 
capture." In the campaign Arnold ^^ is said to have 
asked a captured captain : " What would be my fate 
if I should be taken prisoner ? " " They will cut off that 
shortened leg of yours wounded at Quebec and Sara- 
toga, and bury it with the honors of war, and then 
hang the rest of you on a gibbet." Cornwallis got 
rid of Arnold as soon as possible. 

Troubles multiplied for La Fayette. " With so 
many difficulties to combat, so many enemies to deal 

''^ Letters passed between La Fayette and Phillips. These 
are to be found in the Correspondence of La Fayette. 
Tower's chapter on the campaign also contains them, as well 
as much else in the way of documents, maps, etc. See, also, 
"A History of the United States and Its People," by Elroy M. 
Avery, vol. vi, p. 302. " He [General Phillips] was very ill 
in bed when a cannon ball traversed his bed-room." — La Fay- 
ette's Memoirs." 

" Arnold's " Life of Arnold." 
198 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

with," it looked like, not a mere cloudburst, but a 
cataclysm. His was now the full responsibility ; for a 
letter had just come from Greene directing him to 
take command in Virginia. The odds were all in favor 
of the British. " Their infantry," he wrote to Alex- 
ander Hamilton, " is near five to one ; their cavalry ten 
to one." He was urging Hamilton to hurry down and 
take command of the artillery. He wanted at least one 
bloody tussle — *' to receive one blow that, being beat 
I may at least be beat with some decency. ... 
But, if the Pennsylvanians come, Lord Cornwallis shall 
pay something for his victory." As things were, he 
was '* not strong enough even to be beaten." Alas, 
for La Fayette ! the Pennsylvanians were still in Penn- 
sylvania. Wayne would not be down for two weeks. 
" Were I to fight a battle," he wrote to Washington, 
May 24th, " I should be cut to pieces, the militia dis- 
persed and the arms lost." What, then, should he do? 
Skirmish ! " I am therefore determined to skirmish, 
but not to engage too far ; and particularly to take 
care against their immense and excellent body of 
horse, whom the militia fear as they would so many 
wild beasts." 

Cornwallis, on the contrary, was as pleased with 
the situation as La Fayette was displeased. " I shall 
now proceed," he said, '* to dislodge La Fayette from 
Richmond." He crossed the James at Westover; 
reached White Oak Swamp on the 27th, and Bottom's 
Bridge on the 28th. " The boy cannot escape me," 
^said this portly, smiling lord, in his red coat and 
epaulet glitter. 

La Fayette evacuated Richmond, marched to the 
Forks of the Chickahominy, thence to the South 
Anna, thence to the North Anna, thence to the Rapi- 
dan. That was the quickest way to join hands with 
Wayne. Cornwallis, moving in the same direction, 

199 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

was drawing further away from his base. It was 
the worst game he could play, and the best game for 
La Fayette. Cornwallis had one satisfaction — Tarle- 
ton, with his dragoons, and Simcoe, with his rangers, 
were riding at will. Tower says : " He had mounted 
upon race-horses his advance guard under Tarleton, 
who overran ihe country, and, like birds of prey, 
seized upon everything they could find."^^ They burst 
upon Charlottesville, captured seven members of the 
Legislature, and were within a little of taking the 
Governor himself — great Jefferson — author of the 
Declaration. Luckily he rode away to safety. Like 
La Fayette, he was " flying before the storm." But 
at Fredericksburg, La Fayette's retreat was over. Bet- 
ter days were in store. On the loth of June Anthony 
Wayne, who had begun his march at York, Pa., little 
knowing that he would end it at York, Va., came into 
camp with close upon a thousand veterans covered 
with dust and full of fight. 

Cornwallis grew cautious. His lordship had heard 
of Wayne before. He drew off to think the thing over. 
Really it was not worth while to work his dragoons 
to death. He had already done damage to the extent 
of $1 5,000,000. His predecessor had sent all the tobacco 
up in smoke ; and he himself had stolen all the horses. 
As for the silver, it was buried, and the negroes were 
well hidden in the swamps. Besides he must draw 
La Fayette down to tidewater. His own supplies must 
come up by boat. Nor would Clinton let him alone. 
Here was an order to send 3000 troops to New York 
and to seek a safe defensive position. His lordship 
accordingly left Richmond June 20th for Williamsburg. 
Incidentally he set a trap for Wayne, who was leading 

'* " Memoires historiques de La Fayette," p. 270. 
200 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

La Fayette's advance.'^ Wayne had heard that Corn- 
walHs was crossing the James at Green Spring to retire 
upon Portsmouth ; and he was hastening to strike him, 
while he could catch him foul, when lo ! at the far end of 
a swampy, marshy causeway — a dirt and corduroy road 
— he found Cornwallis awaiting him with 5000 vet- 
erans. Wayne knew that, in such a predicament, '' he 
who hesitates is lost." His riflemen opened with '' a 
galling fire." Then he charged with the bayonet — 800 
against 5000. Cornwallis thought La Fayette was upon 
him with his whole army, now numbering 6000. So he 
made ready for bigger battle, and, while he was thus 
engaged, Wayne drew his men out of the trap. La 
Fayette, who was with Wayne a part of the time and 
spurred back to hurry up his main force, greatly 
admired Wayne that day. He wrote to Washington in 
his praise. Greene, too, commended Wayne : " The 
Marquis gives you glory for your late conduct," he 
said, adding : " Tread softly on the heels of Corn- 
wallis." Wayne w^as sent across the James to watch 
the enemy on the south side. It was good that he got 
so much glory at Green Springs, for one of La Fay- 
ette's sentries shot him in the leg while he was visiting 
headquarters ; and " the caitiff disorder," as he called 
it, kept him from living up to his new nickname. One 
of his " characters " called the " Commodore," or 
" Jemy the Rover," an Irishman in the guardhouse, was 
told that, if disorderly again, he would receive, by 
Wayne's order, " twenty-nine well laid on." " Then," 
said Jemy, "Anthony is mad.^^ Farewell to you ! Clear 

''^ Cornwallis was at Bottom's Bridge, June 21st; New Kent 
Court-house, 22d ; Byrd's Ordinary, 24th. La Fayette was at 
his lordship's heels. At Cooper's Mills, 20 miles from Wil- 
liamsburg, on the 25th he threw Wayne forward. On the 
26th Butler, of Wayne's, struck Simcoe at Spencer's Ordinary. 
It was a brisk fight. The Americans had assumed the 
aggressive. 

^ " Anthony Wayne." by John R. Spears. 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the coast for the Commodore, Mad Anthony's friend." 
This Green Spring affair was the hardest encounter 
of La Fayette's campaign. Controversies have arisen 
with respect to it. La Fayette's account of it in 
his letter to Greene (from Ambler's Plantation, 
opposite Jamestown, July 8th) is clear and manifestly 
just. Tarleton, in his Campaigns, declares that Corn- 
wallis would have annihilated La Fayette's army. 
Tower finds that La Fayette was altogether too wide- 
awake to permit of such a thing. He " had not rashly 
attacked the whole British army." On the contrary, 
he had moved cautiously. ,When rifle-fire broke out, he 
threw forward Vose and Barber to support Wayne; 
but he did not permit them to waste a shot, or put 
themselves in the enemy's clutch. Then he pushed up, 
and in, to see with his own eyes what Cornwallis was 
about. Thus he had two horses shot from under 
him. But he drew a tenable conclusion — he decided 
that Cornwallis had something more vicious in his 
intent than a rear guard fight at a river crossing. 
He thereupon reconnoitered : 

" Following the dictates of his own judgment in 
the matter, he rode forward alone to a point of land 
which extended into the river to the right of his posi- 
tion, whence he could observe the movements of the 
enemy. There he discovered that the British force 
was posted upon an open piece of ground a short dis- 
tance from the river bank at, or near, Ambler's Plan- 
tation, under protection of the batteries upon their ships, 
and evidently awaiting his attack. The situation 
instantly became clear to him." 

Thus La Fayette informed himself ; thus he grasped 
all the necessary facts of the situation and thus he 
guided the succeeding events. La Fayette's wise direc- 
tion at Green Spring, in addition to the fierce 

202 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

fighting of Wayne, defeated the purpose of the 
British Commander. 

La Fayette occupied Williamsburg and Malvern 
Hill. He was holding Cornwallis, and he continued 
to hold him the summer long. 

But why did Clinton weaken, rather than strengthen, 
Cornwallis? Was it that he sought to hamper his 
rival? Hardly. It was because Washington had made 
it appear to him that the real American objective, dur- 
ing the fighting season of 1781, would be New York. 

At Wethersfield, Conn., May 21st, Washington held 
a conference with the Comte de Rochambeau, who was 
accompanied by the Chevalier de Chastellux. The 
Comte de Barras, who had succeeded the Chevalier de 
Ternay in command of the French squadron at New- 
port, was unable to attend the meeting which was 
for the purpose of bringing about joint action by the 
French land and naval forces and the Continental army. 
Rochambeau was the good genius of the conference. 
He was in favor of operations in the South. Washing- 
ton, dreading the waste of troops and time involved in 
a long march to Virginia, preferred an attack upon 
Clinton, provided the French West Indian fleet, under 
the Comte de Grasse, would cooperate. Admiral de 
Barras had it in mind to go to Boston ; but agreed, at 
a Council held on board his flagship, to remain at 
Newport ready for service at Sandy Hook, or at the 
Capes of Chesapeake. Upon his return to New Wind- 
sor, Washington reiterated his wish to strike Clinton. 
In letters to Rochambeau he invited attention to the 
dark outlook in the South. The enemy were making 
strides there. Nothing would help more in that quarter 
than " a serious menace against New York." 

Rochambeau sent the frigate La Concorde all the 
way to the West Indies with a letter to DeGrasse tell- 
ing of Washington's plans and begging that Admiral 

203 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

to sail north and bring with him the corps of five or six 
thousand French troops who were stationed at Santo 
Domingo. Rochambeau wrote : " General Washington 
has but a handful of men. This country has been 
driven to bay. The Continental army has been anni- 
hilated." Therefore, Rochambeau was anxious for 
DeGrasse to bring with him money as well as men 
— 1,200,000 livres — which would be needed to see the 
campaign through. 

La Concorde and the man-of-war Saggittaire were 
'* ships that pass in the night." After he had sent his 
dispatches, Rochambeau received by the Saggittaire 
word from DeGrasse that he would be at Santo 
Domingo toward the end of June, adding : " It will be 
toward the 15th of July at the earliest that I shall be 
able to reach the coast of North America." With 
respect to America, says Tower, Rochambeau always 
acted " with an inflexible rectitude free from any trace 
of self-interest or personal emulation." 

With the utmost urgency he wrote again to the 
Comte de Grasse. His letter is really eloquent in its 
appeal. The two communications ^^ to De Grasse are 
regarded by Tower as *' among the most important 
historical documents of the Revolution; for they laid 
the basis upon which was established the cooperation 
of the allied forces in the Yorktown campaign. They 
formulated the plan of action which Admiral DeGrasse 
carried out, and presented the case to him with such 
emphatic expression that he executed it at once, with- 
out stopping to consult the Ministers, either of France 
or Spain : assuming the responsibility, in view of 
the unquestionable urgency of the case, he turned 
the course of his fleet toward North America, and 
that prompt action on his part assured the success 
of the campaign." 

*^ MS. Letter Books of Rochambeau, Library of Congress. 
204 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

The same Saggittaire, with troops in convoy, 
brought money and other needed things ; so that 
Rochambeau was enabled to join forces with Washing- 
ton at Dobbs' Ferry, on the 6th of July. 

Matters were mending. And glorious news was to 
come from De Grasse. La Concorde brought it, and it 
was in Washington's hands by the 14th of August. 
DeGrasse was coming with his whole fleet. He would 
bring the Marquis de Saint-Simon's troops, with field- 
pieces, siege-guns, mortars and everything that helped 
to make up a formidable army. He would sail for 
the Capes of Chesapeake — " the point," he wrote, 
" which appears to me to have been indicated by you, 
Monsieur le Comte, and by MM. Washington, de la 
Luzerne and de Barras, as the one from which the 
advantage which you propose may be most certainly 
attained." As for the money, that would come. too. 
He would sail on the 13th of August, but, he added: 
" As I shall be able to remain upon the Continent with 
my troops only until the 15th of October, I shall be 
obliged to you, Monsieur le Comte, if you make use 
of me promptly and effectively." 

That was enough for Washington and Rochambeau. 
Here was a chance to win the war. No time could be 
lost. Washington dispatched a courier to La Fayette, 
informing him of the coming of DeGrasse and Saint- 
Simon, and of the plan to capture the army of Corn- 
wallis. La Fayette was to see to it that Cornwallis 
did not escape toward the South. If Wayne had 
started for the Carolinas, he was to be brought back. 

Meantime Clinton had rebuked Cornwallis for quit- 
ting Williamsburg. The Chesapeake should not be 
abandoned. So far from it, Cornwallis was directed 
to fortify a place between the James and York Rivers, 
covering a harbor for ships of the line. Old Point 
Comfort would not do. Yorktown and Gloucester, on 

205 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the opposite bank of the York River, would answer 
admirably. Thus, on the ist of August, Cornwallis 
established himself on the bluffs of the York, at York- 
town; and on the 22d, concentrated at that point his 
whole army — ** a very advantageous place," wrote 
La Fayette to Vergennes, '' for one who has the 
maritime superiority." 

Clinton and Cornwallis thought they had " the mari- 
time superiority." Neither knew of what fate had 
in store for them. Washington arranged for " a false 
demonstration against New York and a real move- 
ment against Yorktown." He and Rochambeau started 
south on the 23d and 24th of August; but Clinton 
mistook their march as belonging to a series of move- 
ments against himself. It was not until the 2d of 
September that light broke in upon him. On that day 
he discovered that he was not facing General Washing- 
ton at all but General William Heath, who had been 
left in charge of the forces on the Hudson. Clinton 
sent Arnold into Connecticut, to burn and ravage, 
in the hope of bringing Washington back; but his 
hope was vain. Washington and Rochambeau, with 
2000 Continentals and 4000 French, were well on 
their way. Washington was his own van-courier. He 
rode into Philadelphia as early as the 30th of August. 
He wanted to save both time and shoe-leather by the 
use of boats. At Philadelphia the Comte de Rocham- 
beau gave the Continental troops a surprise. He paid 
them $20,000 in gold. At Chester, on the 5th of Sep- 
tember, Washington heard of DeGrasse's arrival in the 
Chesapeake. One of Rochambeau's officers says : " I 
never saw a man so thoroughly and openly delighted." 
Standing on the river bank, says Tower, he waved 
his hat in the air as the Comte die Rochambeau, 
approached, and, with many demonstrations of uncon- 
trollable happiness, he announced to him the good news. 

206 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

The Due de Lauzun^- says : "Je naijmnaisvu d'homme 
penctre d'une joie plus v'we et plus franche que le fiU le 
General Washington ; and *' Colonel Guillaume de 
Deux-Ponts declared that, instead of the reserved and 
exceedingly dignified manner of the Commander-in- 
Chief to which they had grown accustomed, they then 
saw his face beaming in delight, and ' a child where 
every wish had been gratified could not have expressed 
a keener joy.' " Here is your human Washington — 
no demi-god, no unapproachable one here. He palpi- 
tates, he warms, he reveals his very heart. 

Next day he was at Head of Elk, where Rochani- 
beau's troops arrived on the 8th. There again they 
boarded boats. Washington, by a quick detour, saw 
Mount Vernon for the first time in six years. On 
the 14th, he greeted La Fayette at Williamsburg, where 
the French troops under General Saint-Simon, had 
arrived. The Marquis Saint-Simon, a much older man, 
paid La Fayette the compliment of serving under him. 
La Fayette had played his part well. General du Por- 
tail had written concerning him : '* Our young Gen- 
eral's judgment is mature ; with all the ardor of his 
temperament, I think he will be able to wait for the 
proper moment and not touch the fruit until it is ripe." 
He had posted \\'ayne at \\^estover to bar the way south 
against Cornwallis, and had taken all other helpful 
precautions. And in due course, he had sent Colonel 
de Gimat to Cape Henry to watch for DeGrasse. Gimat 
boarded the flagship, Ville de Paris, and delivered 
the dispatches, which must have been of great help 
to the Admiral since they set forth the situation clearly 
and in detail. La Fayette " begged him to sail up 
Chesapeake Bay immediately, to drive the enemy's 

^^ " Memoires de Lauzun," p. 367 ; Tower's La Fayette, 
vol. ii, p. 441. 

.207 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

frigates into the James River in order to keep the 
passage clear and to blockade the York River." 

Thus all was going well. And all continued to go 
well. Admiral Rodney had blundered when he lin- 
gered over " the disposal of his rich spoil at Saint 
Eustatius." He had sent Admiral Hood, with 14 
ships of the line who had peeped into the Chesapeake 
in search of DeGrasse just before DeGrasse got there. 
Admiral Graves, searching for Admiral de Barras, had 
looked in upon DeGrasse; and DeGrasse had gone 
outside and driven him back to New York, seeing 
which, the wily Barras had entered the bay and sailed 
up it to help transport the gathering troops. La Fay- 
ette, of course, was ready to close in upon Yorktown 
long before the other commanders. He was " within 
striking distance," with his now formidable force, on 
the night of the 7th. Admiral DeGrasse and M. de 
Sa;int-Simon ^^ urged him to attack. They had little 
time to spare — must be off ; " but La Fayette was deaf 
to this temptation." He knew what Washington 
wanted. Washington had written that should the 
retreat of Cornwallis by water be cut off, '' you will 
do all in your power to prevent his escape by land. 
May that great felicity be reserved for you." " That 
felicity," comments Tower, ** was, indeed, reserved for 
La Fayette, and it was one of the proudest recollections 
of his Hfe." 

" You see how critically important the present 
moment is," wrote Washington to La Fayette, in 
another letter; but the time for letter-writing in this 
campaign was past; here was Washington himself. 
He arrived, with Rochambeau, on the 14th. A salute 
was fired. Both armies paraded. Visits of courtesy 
were exchanged. An elegant supper was served up, 
and Colonel Richard Butler says in his Journal, many 

^ " Memoires historique de La Fayette,'' i, 277. 
208 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

*' great personages and officers supped together in the 
utmost harmony and happiness." ** Poor La Fayette 
that day looked pinched and yellow. He had the ague. 
Chickahominy Swamps and other malarial spots in the 
Virginia Peninsula had been too much for him. But, 
next day, he was himself again, and gave a dinner in 
honor of the many distinguished officers then in camp. 
He was no longer an independent commander. He 
was happy in the thought that Washington was about 
to end in triumph his long and heroic struggle against 
innumerable discouragements and downright adversi- 
ties. But there was still some apprehension. DeGrasse 
was restless. Accordingly, La Fayette went on board 
the Ville de Paris and begged for a little more time. 
He gained his point. It is important to remember that 
the impatience of DeGrasse was not only justified, 
under the circumstances, but that his haste made all 
others hasten. 

On the 27th of September Washington issued his 
orders — and model orders they were — for the invest- 
ment of Yorktown. At 5 a.m., of the 28th, the two 
armies pressed forward. In Washington's own words : 
'* Half a mile beyond the Half-way House the French 
and Americans separated. The former continued on 
the direct road to York, by the Brick House ; the latter 
filed ofif to the right for Munford's Bridge, where a 
junction with the militia was to be made. About noon 
the head of each column arrived at its ground." The 
enemy's pickets were driven in on the left ; the enemy's 
horse patrols, on the right. The American troops con- 
stituted the right wing; the French troops the left 
wing. The French took advantage of the woods, the 
rideaux, and the marshy creeks, so as to confine the 
enemy to within pistol shot of their works. The left 
wing of the French battalions rested upon the river 

•^ The Historical Magazine, vol. viii, p. 102. 
14 209 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

above the town, and their right extended to a low 
ravine where it was met by the left wing of the Ameri- 
cans, whose right rested upon the stream below the 
town." " The lines being formed, all the troops, the 
officers and men, lay upon their arms during the night." 
Then guns and stores were brought up. 

Trenches were opened on the 5th. Tighter and 
tighter the allied armies gripped their game ; though not 
without trouble — not without tragedies. Colonel Alex- 
ander Scammell of the Light Infantry, pushing too 
close to town, was taken ; and, though he had surren- 
dered, was vilely shot in the back. A noble soul was 
he — six feet-two, patriot and gentleman — whose death 
angered his comrades because of the treachery of the 
wretch who had pistoled him. 

There was keen rivalry among the officers. They 
were impatient. Malaria was in the air. *' The night 
dews were heavy, and wet through the tents." The 
French especially feared the ague. The motto was : 
" Drive ahead ! Drive ahead ! Drive ahead hard ! " 
On the 9th the batteries opened fire. Washington, with 
his own hand, touched ofif the first American cannon. 
Red-hot shot set British vessels on fire in the York, and 
sunk many of them. All night long the sky was lit. 
On the American part of the line, La Fayette, Steuben 
and Lincoln alternately commanded in the trenches; 
on the French part, Saint-Simon, Chastelleux, and the 
brothers de Viomenil. On the loth, Cornwallis unsuc- 
cessfully attempted to break through by way of Glouce- 
ster Point. He had some troops there, hemmed in. He 
embarked a strong force on flat boats, crossed the 
York, and attempted to turn the right of M. de Choisy, 
who commanded the French marines, Lauzun's Legion 
and other troops, enveloping the British under Tarleton 
on that jutting point of land. Really two sieges were 
going on — Yorktown and Gloucester. That night there 

210 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

was fighting. So, too, on the nth. On the 12th, the 
second parahel was begun, close in upon the enemy's 
works. On the 14th, came what John Austin Stevens *^ 
calls " the magnificent episode and conclusive event of 
the siege." 

" Nightfall was the hour fixed upon. Soon after 
it was fully dark, six consecutive bomb-shells, fired 
from one of the French batteries, gave the signal for 
the sudden dash. Baron Viomenil commanded the 
entire movement. Washington, in the trenches, wit- 
nessed all the dispositions at the moment of the attack. 
The American Light Infantry, commanded by La Fay- 
ette, stormed the left battery on the river bank; the 
French grenadiers led by the Baron de Viomenil, the 
right British redoubt. . . . Conspicuous for their 
steadiness were the grenadiers of the regiment of 
Gatinois, thirty of whom fell in the attack at the first 
fire. They had promised Rochambeau, who made a 
personal appeal to them, to suffer themselves to be 
killed to the last man rather than fail, but they entreated 
to have the ancient name of their regiment restored. 
The motto of ' Auvergne sans tache' (Auvergne the 
spotless) had been famous in the army. Rochambeau 
kept his promise, and the King wrote upon his peti- 
tion with his own hand 'Bon pour Royal Auvergne' 
La Fayette in his report to Washington the next day 
said that Lieutenant-Colonel Gimat's battalion led the 
van and was followed by that of Lieutenant-Colonel 
Hamilton, who commanded the whole advance corps, 
while Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens with a party of 
eighty turned the redoubt. Not a gun was fired, and 
the ardor of the troops did not give time for the sappers 
to derange the abatis, and owing to the conduct of the 
commanders and the bravery of the men the redoubt 
was stormed with an uncommon rapidity." 

Colonel Stephen Olney, of Rhode Island, was first 
to mount the parapet. He was wounded. Colonel 

^^ " The Allies at Yorktown," by John Austin Stevens, 
Mag. of American History, vol. vi, no. i. 

211 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Armand (the Comte de la Rouerie^^) accompanied 
the assaulting column as a volunteer. The French 
marched with fixed bayonets " through a fire that lasted 
eight or ten minutes." The Comte de Deux Fonts and 
de Lameth were among the wounded. The Chevalier 
de Chastellux repulsed a vicious sortie on the 15th. It 
was made during a violent storm. On the i6th the 
French batteries opened from the second parallel; 
on the 17th the American batteries. 

At ten that morning the British beat a parley. A 
flag of truce went up. At the old Moore house they 
offered to surrender. On the 19th they signed articles 
of capitulation. 

Thus writes J. J. Jusserand: "On the 19th of 
October, after a loss of less than 300 men in each of the 
besieging armies, an act was signed as great in its 
consequences as any that ever followed the bloodiest 
battles, the capitulation of Yorktown. It was in a way 
a ratification of that other act, which had been pro- 
posed for signature five years before at Philadelphia 
by men whose fate had more than once in the interval 
seemed desperate, the Declaration of Independence." 

A story got abroad that the Americans grew savage 
in storming the redoubts at Yorktown. There were 

*^ Comte de la Roueire (Colonel Armand) was born at St. 
Malo in 1756. He was an officer in his early youth in one of 
the regiments of the Royal Body-guards. He fell madly in 
love with Mile. Beaumesnil, " a pretty, but not clever," actress, 
who refused him. On her account he fought a duel with the 
Comte Bourbon-Brisset. Then he became a monk at the 
monastery of La Trappe. But he " threw aside the monk's 
cowl, and joined La Fayette." 

In the French Revolution he led the Breton peasants in 
behalf of royalty. Disguised as a beggar he wandered about 
Brittany where he died for lack of food and care, Jan. 30, 1793. 
" His body," says the Chevalier de Potitgibaud, " was buried 
in a grave dug in the midst of the forest. His papers were 
buried with him in a glass bottle." The papers were dug up 
by a spy and on the strength of them fourteen persons were 
executed, including the proprietor of the Chateau where 
La Roueire died. 

212 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

charges of inhumanity, which Colonel Hamilton felt 
called upon to deny. They were based upon the cry 
raiised: '' Remember New London! '' . . . "Yet," 
says George Washington Parke Custis, '' no sooner had 
the foe submitted, than mercy, divine mercy, sat trium- 
phant on my country's colors." 

Rochambeau, '* veteran of a hundred fields"®^ gives 
a clear pen-picture of the final scene : 

** The Americans and French took possession of the 
two batteries at noon. The garrison marched out at 
two o'clock between the two armies, drums beating, 
carrying their arms, which were stacked with about 
twenty flags. Lord Cornwallis being ill. General 
O'Hara marched out at the head of the garrison. When 
he approached me he presented his sword. I pointed 
to General Washington opposite to me as the head 
of the American army, and said to him that, as 
the French army was an auxiliary on this continent 
it was now from the American general he must 
take his orders." 

General Lincoln it was who took from O'Hara the 
sword of Cornwallis. At once he returned it. The 
affair was decidedly more spectacular than one gathers 
from the French general's matter-of-fact description. 
The colors were cased. The drums beat the march 
"The World Turned Upside Down." «« The field 

" Lieutenant-General Jean Baptiste Donation de Vimeur, 
Comte de Rochambeau, was seven years older than Washing- 
ton. This Minden veteran was in Paris suffering from rheu- 
matism when given the French command. He was a fit mate 
for Washington — a wise leader as well as a great soldier. One 
of the best studies of him is " Rochambeau in America," by 
J. J. Jusserand, in the volume, " With Americans Past and 
Present." After having been very near death from his wounds 
in 1747, Rochambeau died only in 1807, being then in his castle 
of Rochambeau, in Vendomois, aged 82. His widow lived to 
be 94. 

** According to Levasseur, when La Fayette noticed that 
the British were disposed to avert their faces from the Ameri- 
cans and look toward the French, he ordered the band at- 
tached to his light infantry to play " Yankee Doodle." 

213 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

was brilliant with banners and the proudest troops of 
France — Soissonais, Bourbonnais, Gatinois, Royal 
Deux Fonts, and Saintonge. 

The prisoners numbered 7247 troops and 840 sailors. 
Washington was too wise to grant Cornwallis the privi- 
leges accorded Burgoyne by Gates. He reaped the full 
fruits of the great victory. 

After the horse was taken — a whole week after — 
the British came down from New York to lock the 
stable door. Clinton, Graves, Hood, with a big fleet, 
with 7000 fresh troops and all the determination they 
could muster, approached the Capes; but they were 
too late. 

" The play is over. Monsieur le Comte," wrote La 
Fayette to Vergennes ; " the fifth act has just come to 
an end. I was somewhat disturbed during the former 
acts, but my heart rejoices exceedingly at this last; 
and I have no less pleasure in congratulating you upon 
the happy ending of our campaign." 

So ended not only La Fayette's greatest campaign, 
but the American Revolution. " It was the grandest of 
causes," said La Fayette, " won by the skirmishes 
of sentinels and outposts." 

Lauzun, *' the hard-fighting, amorous Duke," took 
the news to France in 22 days. Maurepas heard it as 
he lay dying. Versailles rejoiced. But the happiest 
of men was a certain old Doctor at Passy. 

But how was it across the Channel? Sir N. W. 
Wraxall, in his " Memoirs," says that he asked Lord 
George Germain how Lord North took the news of 
Yorktown. " As he would have taken a ball in the 
breast," replied Lord George, " for he opened his 
arms, exclaimed wildly as he paced up and down the 
apartment during a few minutes : * O God ! it is all 
over ! ' words which he repeated many times under 
emotions of the greatest agitation and distress." The 

214 



CAMPAIGNING IN AMERICA 

surrender long remained a sore matter with the British. 
Clinton wanted to call Cornwallis out; but the affair 
ended in a paper quarrel. 

Yorktown was a great triumph for La Fayette. It 
was on his 24th birthday anniversary that he took 
command of the allied armies — a coincidence remarked 
upon by many of his friends. They were impressed 
by the fact that one so young should have risen so 
high; mainly, too, through his own enthusiasm and 
exertions. Cornwallis paid him a compliment when he 
requested an interview with him. La Fayette met his 
lordship and there was quite a talk over the incidents 
of the campaign. 

La Fayette accompanied Washington on a visit to 
Admiral DeGrasse. A Carolina expedition in which 
La Fayette was to command the land forces was 
planned; however, as DeGrasse was keen to be off, 
the whole scheme fell through. On the 14th the French 
fleet sailed for the West Indies. 

La Fayette set out for the North. At Baltimore, 
responding to an address, he said : " My campaign began 
with a personal obligation to the people of Baltimore, 
at the end of which I find myself bound to them by a 
tie of everlasting gratitude." At Philadelphia, Con- 
gress voted him leave of absence. By him it sent dis- 
patches to Louis XVI. Washington wrote La Fayette 
a good-by letter, closing " Your affectionate friend." 
xA.t Boston, La Fayette subscribed 25 guineas toward 
rebuilding Charleston meeting-house, destroyed during 
the Battle of Bunker Hill. Two days before Christmas, 
he sailed by the French frigate L' Alliance for France. 
Twenty-three days later he landed at L'Orient. 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

Long since La Fayette's fame had spread in France. 
He was in particular the hero of the young noblesse; 
and it is hardly too much to add that he was the envy 
of the old courtiers of Paris and Versailles. False tales 
about him were woven with the true. One rumor ran 
that he had fought single-handed with savage warriors 
of the Alleghenies. Another asserted that he was as 
dead as Hector ; but that the truth was being suppressed. 
As soon as the duchess d'Ayen heard this piece of 
saddening news, she thought out a plan to keep it 
from Adrienne until it could be either disproved or 
verified. She knew how deep her daughter's love was 
for her absent young knight, and proceeded to shield 
her. Together they journeyed to Bourgogne, where 
dwelt Mme. d'Ayen's father, M. de Fresnes; and, 
after that visit, they made another to the Comtesse 
Auguste de la Marck at Raismes. Not until years after 
did Madame de La Fayette know of her mother's loving 
strategem. Meantime, Louise lost her son, Adrien; 
and Adrienne herself became the mother of a boy — 
George Washington La Fayette, born on December 23, 
1779. Thus joy and sorrow alternated at the Hotel de 
Noailles, while Louis de Noailles, in Rochambeau's 
army, and La Fayette in Washington's, helped to give 
Cornwallis his quietus at Yorktown. Then there was 
a surprise in the Rue de Honore. On the 21st of 
January, 1782, La Fayette appeared in Paris. He was 
his ow^n courier, announcing the discomfiture of King 
George. Great was the " enthusiasm excited by M. de 
La Fayette's arrival." A fete was being held at the 
Hotel de Ville in honor of the Dauphin's birth. " Mme. 
de La Fayette, who was present, received a very 

216 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

remarkable proof of royal favor. The Queen herself 
drove her back in her own carriage to the Hotel de 
Noailles, where M. de La Fayette had just arrived." 
" With a last word of congratulation to the wife of the 
fortunate general," says M. MacDermot Crawford, 
" Marie Antoinette drove away. Almost beside her- 
self, stumbling over the ceremonious dress she wore, 
Adrienne flew up the steps between stiff rows of lackeys 
and a moment later was folded tightly in those arms 
whose circle made her world. . . ." " The joy of 
seeing him again and the fascination of his presence 
were intensely felt by my mother," her daughter tells 
us. " So overpowering were her feelings that for sev- 
eral months she felt ready to faint every time he left the 
room. She was alarmed at the vehemence of her pas- 
sion, fearing that she could not conceal it from my 
father, and that it might become annoying to him, and 
she therefore endeavored to restrain it for his sake 
only." M. MacDermot Crawford^ adds: 

" For the months following the return of her hus- 
band she was in a very grave condition, and after seven 
months of great suffering, her last child, Marie Antoi- 
nette Virginie, named for the Queen, and in memory 
of the Virginia campaign, was born. Though the child 
was at first delicate, from the circumstances preceding 
its birth, it throve apace, and from this time, the mother 
seemed to rally, and daily gained strength as she rested 
in the shade of their beautiful garden, or from the 
window watched the ever-changing aspect of river and 
royal palace beyond. 

" Shortly after this event, the La Fayettes, who 
had lived at the Hotel de Noailles, according to agree- 
ment, since their marriage, bought a fine hotel in the 
rue de Bourbon — now rue de Lille — almost at the cor- 
ner of the rue de Bourgogne. This house, to be later 
the scene of great hospitality, cost the sum of 200,000 
livres, with another 50,000 livres for improvements 

^ " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," p. 121. 
217 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

and 50,000 for furnishings, now alas ! gone the way 
of so many fine old places, swept by the restless 
march of alteration into the Boulevard St. Germain. 
From the windows could be seen the tree-tops of her 
childhood home." 

La Fayette, though lionized in many circles, kept 
his head. When we stick a pin at the fact that he 
was not yet twenty-five years old, we are inclined to 
wonder at his self-restraint in an exceedingly alluring 
capital famed for its gaieties. 

As illustrating his temptations, and in deference 
to the eternal verities, we find ourselves impelled to 
quote from the " Memoirs of the Comtesse de 
Boigne." - as follows : 

" It was not only wealth that furnished victims for 
the Queen's balls. M. de Chabannes, of high birth, 
handsome, young, rich, and almost the man of the 
hour, in making his first appearance was so clumsy 
as to fall down while dancing, and was so tactless as 
to cry ' Jesus Maria ! ' as he fell. It was a fall from 
which he never arose again; the designation clung to 
him permanently to his complete despair. He volun- 
teered for the American wars and distinguished him- 
self in action, but he came back ' Jesus Maria,' as he 
went out. Thus the Due de Coigny observed to his 
daughters on the day they were presented at Court, 
' Remember that in this country vice is immaterial, 
but ridicule is fatal.' 

" M. de La Fayette did not, however, succumb to 
the epithet ' Gilles le Grand ' (the fool's part on the 
1 8th century stage) which M. de Choiseul had given 
him on his return from America. On the contrary he 
aroused so much enthusiasm that society undertook 
to secure his success with Mme. de Simione, to whom 
he had been paying attention before his departure. 
She was considered the prettiest woman in France, 
and had no afifairs as yet. Every one conspired to throw 
her into the arms of La Fayette, and a few days after 

"^ " Memoires de Comtesse de Boigne" (1781-1814). 
Edited from the original MS. by M. Charles Nicoullaud, 1907. 

218 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

his return he was by her side in a box at Versailles, 
while an air was being sung from some opera, ' Love 
beneath the laurels finds ladies kind.' The moral was 
pointed in a manner which clearly showed the sym- 
pathy and approval of this privileged audience." 

Whether La Fayette understood the gay game and 
was " fooling them to the top of their bent " may be 
surmised. But we know that he was not to be vic- 
timized w^hen it was designed to draw him into the 
train of the Count de Provence, and we know that he 
clung through a long life to high and definite prin- 
ciples. In one of his letters to the bailli de Ploen, he 
declared : " I have always loved liberty with enthusiasm 
which actuates the religious man, with the passion of a 
lover and with the conviction of a geometrician. On 
leaving college, where nothing had displeased me more 
than a state of dependence, I viewed the greatness and 
the bitterness of the Court with contempt, the frivoli- 
ties of society with pity, the minute pedantry of the 
army with disgust, and oppression of every sort with 
indignation. The attraction of the American revolution 
transported me suddenly to my place. I felt myself 
tranquil only when sailing between the Continent whose 
powers I had braved and that ... to which I 
had devoted myself." 

La Fayette was made Field Marshal, his appoint- 
ment dating from the surrender of Cornwallis. He 
met the other Marshals of France at a dinner given 
in his honor by the Marechal de Richelieu. Washing- 
ton's health was drunk. Franklin wrote (March, 1782) 
to Robert R. Livingston : 

" The Marquis de La Fayette was, at his return 
hither, received by all ranks with all possible distinc- 
tion. He daily gains in the general esteem and affec- 
tion, and promises to be a great man here. He is 
extremely attached to our cause ; we are on the most 

219 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

friendly and confidential footing with each other, and 
he is really very serviceable to me in my applications 
for additional assistance." 

Again, June 23, Franklin wrote : ** The Marquis de 
La Fayette is of great use in our affairs here." 

Nevertheless, he " nettled Franklin," and " nettled 
both Franklin and Jay," according to John Adams (in 
his Diary, November 23, 1782) when at Passy the 
four great men were together. La Fayette had shown 
them a letter to the Comte de Vergennes about a loan ; 
and had asked the three Americans to certify his reten- 
tion at Paris as desirable in view of pending negotia- 
tions. *' This unlimited ambition will obstruct his 
rise," comments the diarist ; " he grasps at all civil, 
political, and military, and would be thought the unum 
necessarium in everything ; he has so much real merit, 
such family supports, and so much favor at Court that 
he need not reccur to artifice." Adams was hard on 
La Fayette, who had been told by Vergennes he must 
have ** something French to go upon." He was supply- 
ing the " something French." As for the certification, 
he was safeguarding himself as an American officer 
and was doing it in the right way. This is Tuckerman's 
view, who adds : " Vanity is the Frenchman's weak- 
ness, and La Fayette was a thorough Frenchman." Yet 
our* John of Braintree, Mass., was no Frenchman. 

But big affairs were afoot. So dilatory was Great 
Britain in her peace negotiations that France and 
Spain organized a powerful force, on sea and shore, to 
cross the Atlantic and attack the English Colonies in 
American waters, Comte d'Esta'ing was in command 
of the ships of the line, which formed a fleet of sixty- 
four sail. La Fayette was to go out as a chief of staff 
of the allied army, whose destination was: First, 
Jamaica ; then. New York ; and then Canada. He left 

220 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

Brest in December for Cadiz. But the expedition 
was nullified by the peace at Paris. As soon as La 
Fayette heard of it, he induced the Comte d'Estaing 
to dispatch the Triumph to Philadelphia with news 
of the treaty. " My great affair is settled," he wrote 
to Vergennes ; " America is sure of her independence ; 
humanity has gained its cause, and liberty will never 
be without a refuge." 

While in Spain, La Fayette did America a good turn 
that should not be forgotten. Jay had quit the court 
of Madrid in disgust with Spanish methods; and 
Floridablanca, the minister, had refused to allow 
Carmichael, Charge d' Affaires, official standing. La 
Fayette was so much in favor, by reason of his 
laurels, that he secured full recognition for Car- 
michael. And so the incident was closed. This Span- 
ish service was but one of the numerous friendly 
services on La Fayette's part. He persuaded the 
French Government to open its ports to American 
commerce. " In the arrangement concluded," says a 
Nantucket, Mass., writer in The Magazine of Ameri- 
can History (vol. ii, p. 368), "was the admission of 
the whale oil into the French ports on the same terms 
as that imported from Hanseatic towns." This con- 
cession gave an immediate impetus to the American 
fisheries, and employment to many, who were about to 
leave their homes to take up residences in Nova Scotia. 
By way of thanks Nantucket people each contributed 
the milk his cow yielded in the course of twenty-four 
hours and sent a 500-pound cheese to La Fayette. 

Busy with his own affairs, he was unable to revisit 
the United States during the year 1783. Washington 
urged him to come and wrote also a very hearty invi- 
tation to Mme. de La Fayette. ■ He regretted, he said, 
that Mrs. Washington could not go to France; but 
with the lady of his young friend it was different. 

221 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" Come, then," he wrote, " let me entreat you. Call my 
cottage your own, for your own doors do not open to 
you w^ith more readiness than would mine." But Mme. 
de La Fayette felt that she could not leave her children. 
Many letters passed. Several dates were set for La 
Fayette's start. Finally he boarded the packet Courrier 
de New York, Captain Joubert; and, departing from 
rOrient in company with the Chevalier de Caraman 
and Colonel Harmar, who had carried the ratification 
of peace to England, reached New York on Wednesday 
evening, August 4.^ 

As Washington himself described it, the visitor 
" was crowned everywhere with wreaths of love and 
respect." Comrades greeted him at every turn. At 
New York they put on their uniforms tO' attend the 
dinner in his honor. Word ran on ahead of him that 
he was coming and in every town there was a wel- 
come. Approaching Philadelphia, he found his escort 
ten miles out. The city was en fete; bells rang till 
ten at night ; the illumination was brilliant ; huzzaing 
crowds followed him. Wayne, St. Clair and Irvine 
presented him with an address in behalf of the Penn- 
sylvania Line. The Legislature told him they had 
named Fayette County after him. He left Phila- 
delphia on August 14th and reached Mount Vernon 
on the 1 6th. There he spent the happiest twelve days 
of his visit. At Baltimore, on the ist of September, 
he was the guest of honor at a banquet of three hun- 
dred covers. It was a Revolutionary love-feast. At 
New York, twelve days later, he was given a golden 
box in which was '' the freedom of the city." There 
was a banquet, too. Nothing like the lionizing, or the 
banqueting had ever before been seen in America. 

* " Visit of La Fayette to the United States in 1784," b}' 
John Austin Stevens, Mag. of American Hist., vol. ii, pp. 724- 
733. See also " Voyage aux Etats-Unis in 1784. Memoires, 
Correspondence et Manuscrits," ii, 95-107. 

222 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

At Fort Schuyler he had a talk with the Indians. 
Tocksicanetrion, chief of the Mohawks, Grasshopper 
and other orators addressed him. To the Indians 
La Fayette was Kayewla — the white warrior — a name 
they had given him during the Revolution. He visited 
the Saratoga battlefield, whence he passed eastward 
through Connecticut and Massachusetts, feasting as 
he progressed. The great New England event was at 
Boston, when, on the 19th day of October, anniversary 
of the surrender of Yorktown, he was given a dinner 
of 500 covers at Faneuil Hall. " Thirteen partiotic 
toasts were drunk, each accompanied by a salute of guns 
from the market-place. When the health of Wash- 
ington was proposed, a curtain placed behind the 
Marquis fell and disclosed the picture of General 
W^ashington, crowned with laurels and decorated with 
the colors of France and America. La Fayette, rising 
to the toast, answered it with the cry of ' Vive Wash- 
ington,' which was taken up and re-echoed through 
the hall." After a northward cruise along the coast 
and a visit to Newport, La Fayette sailed in the 40-gun 
frigate La Nyniphe for Yorktown, where he was the 
guest of the old patriot. General Nelson. At Rich- 
mond, on the 1 6th of November, W^ashington met him. 
So did Patrick Henry, Madison and many another 
patriot and statesman, for the Virginia of that day was 
full of great men and they all found delight in honoring 
one whom they regarded as the traditional " friend 
in need." Washington again entertained La Fayette 
at Mt. Vernon and accompanied him to Annapolis, 
where the State of Maryland conferred citizenship 
upon him. Several states naturalized La Fayette. His 
farewell to General Washington was followed on 
December 8 by a ceremonious leave-taking of Con- 
gress, then sitting at Trenton. On the 21st he boarded 
La Nymphe, arnid the thunder of guns, and sailed 

223 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

for home. " In the four months and twenty-one days 
of his stay he traveled over 1914 miles." One of his 
fellow passengers was Otsiquette,* an Oneida Indian, 
whom he was taking to Europe to educate. 

Not only did La Fayette try to develop the Indians 
but he was one of the most active members of the 
society for the elevation of the negroes — les amis du 
noir. M. MacDermot Crawford in " Mme. de La 
Fayette and her Family," tells of this philanthropic 
undertaking in a few words, thus : 

" It was the burning question of the day. La Fay- 
ette and Larochefoucauld were at the head of the 
movement. La Fayette was encouraged by the Minis- 
ter of Marine, M. de Castries, who directed M. Les- 
caliers, the Intendant of Cayenne, a ' man of skill, 
probity and experience,' to try upon the King's negroes 
the scheme for a new system. La Fayette had at first 
expended 120,000 livres upon the purchase of his plan- 
tation La Belle Gabrielle, at Cayenne, on the northeast 
coast of South America, its management being confided 
to a kindred thinker and philosopher, M. de Richeprey. 
The details of the venture were the sole care of Mme. 
de La Fayette. With its management she was familiar, 
of each expenditure she kept careful account, and had 
a carte blanche from her husband, who was too much 
occupied with the troubled politics of France to have 
much time left for other matters. What an opportu- 
nity for her devout mind and unworldly dispo- 
sition. She cultivated the friendship of the priests 
of the Seminaire du Saint Esprit, worthy men 
who had a missionary establishment at Cayenne. 
With the Abbe Farjon, the cure in charge, she 
corresponded continuously." 

* In the late vessel from France came passenger Peter 
Otsiquette, who we are to'ld is a son to the King of the Six 
Nations, and whom the Marquis de La Fayette sometime since 
sent to France to be educated. He speaks the French and 
EngHsh languages with accuracy, and is acquainted with most 
branches of poHte education — musical, etc., and is on his way 
to the Indian country. — Boston Advertiser, Aug. 6, 1788. 

224 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

The plan was this : Richeprey was to start La Fay- 
ette's plantation ; then La Rochefoucauld was to buy 
another and Malesherbes a third. The three were to 
become the nucleus of a grand experiment of gradual 
emancipation. At the right time of ripeness France 
was to decree the emancipation throughout the colony.^ 

But the Revolution interrupted the work. Revolu- 
tionists seized La Belle Gabrielle, and the slaves were 
sold. So little, if anything, was accomplished for the 
benefit of the black people in that part of the world. 

Those days of plans and projects and travel were 
happy ones for the La Fayettes. Some of the experi- 
ences were amusing. In Walpole's Letters *^ we find 
a reference to the stir caused when Washington sent to 
La Fayette the order of the Cincinnati. Says Walpole : 
" He sent it to La Fayette and it made an uproar in 
Paris. As the noblesse spell only by ear, they took 
it for the order of St. Senatus. They had recourse to 
the calendar, and finding no such saint in heaven's 
almanac, concluded it was a new organization at Bos- 
ton, and were enraged that Washington should encroach 
on the papacy as well as on the diadem." 

As for La Fayette's European travels, here is an 
account of his visit to Frederick the Great : ^ 

" La Fayette was dressed as became a gallant and 
a famous nobleman of the politest nation on earth, 
Frederick was dressed very much like a man who 
thought it made no difference what sort of clothes he 
wore. La Fayette was scandalized at Frederick's 
appearance and wrote to Washington about it imme- 
diately. Frederick was clad in * an old dirty uniform 

^ Lady Morgan, in " France," speaks of the Hotel de La 
Rochefoucauld as the rendezvous " where the first meeting of 
those five friends took place who formed the subsidiary society 
of Ics amis de negres " — Gregoire, Mirabeau, de La Rochefou- 
cauld, Condorcet and La Fayette. 

" Vol. xiii, p. io6, " To the Comtesse of Upper Ossary." 
^ *' The Story of France," by Thomas E. Watson, vol. ii, 
pp. 730, 731- 

15 225 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

all covered with Spanish snuff, his head leaning over 
one shoulder and his fingers almost dislocated by gout. 
However shabby and filthy Frederick's dress was, La 
Fayette says his eyes were fine — the finest he had ever 
seen — sometimes fierce, sometimes soft. 

'* The King invites La Fayette to dinner, and La 
Fayette talks copiously and enthusiastically of Free- 
dom. America has led the way, mankind will throw 
off the shackles of the past, fraternity, good-will and 
peace will bless the world, and so forth and so on. 
Old Frederick listens, his head hanging over to one 
side, his eye as bright as a bird's, his lips parted in 
a sarcastic grin. ' America will return to the good 
old plan,' ventures Frederick. ' No ! Never ! ' says 
La Fayette. ' No monarchy, no aristocracy will ever 
exist there.' The King is silent, his look incredulous. 

** ' Do you think,' says La Fayette warmly, ' that 
I went to America to win military renown? No. It 
was for liberty I went there. He who loves liberty 
can only remain quiet after having established it in his 
own country.' 

" The old King listens with a grim smile, and says : 
* Sir, I know a young man who, after having visited 
countries where liberty and equality reigned, conceived 
the idea of establishing the same system in his own 
country. Do you know what happened to him?' 

" * No sire,' answered La Fayette. 

" ' He was hanged,' says Frederick." 

It is now our duty and our purpose to simplify, if 
we can, an exceedingly complex matter. Insofar as 
we can, in brief space, we shall seek to make plain the 
causes, the progressive stages and the issue of the 
French Revolution. One must understand the French 
Revolution in order to understand this La Fayette 
of whom we are trying to take the measure. One 
ought to understand it anyhow, altogether apart from 
La Fayette, who certainly was no inconsiderable figure 
in it. Taine, with a pack of documents on his back, 
comes to us and helpfully clears up the subject. He 
gives us origins — digs to the roots, or some of them, 

226 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

and lays them bare for us. Others find other roots. 
Indeed many able historians — Mignet, Michelet, Car- 
lyle — who specialize on this event, all agree with Alexis 
de Tocqueville when he says : ^ " The Revolution will 
ever remain in darkness to those who do not look 
beyond it. Without a clear view of society in the olden 
time, of its laws, its faults, its prejudices, its suffer- 
ings, its greatness, it is impossible to understand the 
conduct of the French during the sixty years which 
have followed its fall." Again, he says, with some- 
thing of awe, something of eloquence : " I read atten- 
tively the memorials drawn up by the three orders 
before the meeting in 1789, and when I come to put 
them all together I perceive with a sort of terror that 
what is demanded is the abolition of all the laws and 
the usages which are current in the country; and I 
see at a glance that there is about to be enacted one 
of the vastest and most dangerous revolutions ever seen 
in the world." 

So, too, such a one as Louis Blanc is made solemn 
in recounting the tragic and interest-compelling events : 
History begins and finishes nowhere. How, then, fix 
the genesis of the Revolution? There is nothing so 
alarming about it — at first. But the Assembly? Its 
members represent all of humanity's interests, resent- 
ments, griefs, hopes. They are in "the thickest" of 
treasons and plots." They hear the clamors of civil 
war. Europe leagues itself against them. Chateaux 
burn, tocsins sound, drums beat. Then the furies are 
let loose. " France is filled with funerals." '' Many 
perish to-day; no one knows if he will be alive 
to-morrow." " What a formidable, what a bloody 
history ! " In his exaltation, in his dignity, man rises 
above the fear of death. Prison, guillotine, street-tri- 

* " The Old Regime and the Revolution," by Alexis de 
Tocqueville, Introduction. 

227 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

bune " bring to light virtues and crimes of which 
antiquity was ignorant." 

Just how was the ancient balance first disturbed? 
Well, we must go back a long ways to answer that. We 
must go back to November, 1439, when, under Charles 
V, who was voted a subsidy by the States-General 
at Orleans, a decree was issued providing for a body of 
gendarmerie. A simple matter, you say, but a land- 
tax — the taille dcs gens de guerre — was imposed for the 
support of these soldiers. This tax was annually re-im- 
posed by the King in Council. It was levied upon the 
property of the routiers (plebeians); it left "the 
clergy and the nobility, who were exempt from it, 
without motive for resisting, through the States-Gen- 
eral the increasing power of the crown." After 1439 
they abandoned the championship of the great prin- 
ciple insisted upon by the States-General in 1355-56 
that no tax should be levied without the assent of that 
body, and that the three Orders should be subjected 
to the same taxes. Henceforth it was admitted that, 
" the clerg}^ paid with their prayers, the nobility with 
their swords, and the people with their money." ® 
The Third Estate, thus abandoned by the privileged 
classes, turned to the King and supported every attack 
made by the Crown upon the rights of the clergy and 
the nobility. When those rights were abolished, the 
Crown was absolute; and, being absolute, was left 
alone to face the people who had made it so. " The 
defection of the clergy and nobility," says Rambaud, 
** Hist, de la Civilization Franqaise," " was the first 
cause of the establishment of absolute power, and of the 
Revolution which was accomplished 350 years later." 

Let us mark this well : For a mess of postage, for 
immunities, privileges, pluckings, the clergy and the 
nobles sold their birthright. Half the taxes wrung 

° Headlam, " France," pp yz, 74. 
228 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

out of the toilers went into the pockets of the idle 
lords. " Of 35,000,000 of taxes only 16,200,000 
reached the treasury." If lords and clergy had been 
tax-payers instead of tax-eaters no bloody internal 
trouble might have come upon France. 

But Taine warns us against losing sight of the fact 
that the nobles and clergy bore great parts in the making 
of France. Each was essential. Time was when, as 
by magic, the over-running warrior-brute was checked 
and charmed at the church door and knelt there. He 
ceased to destroy. He began to build villages, with 
other churches ; and soon cities, with cathedrals. There 
was prosperity in France in that early day ; there was 
chivalric tone and feeling; and a certain happiness 
that goes with the light yoke. But nobles and clergy 
being human, being selfish, being haughty, drew too 
much to themselves. The common man ^^ found 
the valley and the field of labor lower — much lower, 
deep, like a sepulchre — and the two towers in the 
horizon more lofty — more gloomy, more heavy; 
gloomy the church-steeple, and dismal the feudal 
castle. The church bell murmured " Ever" ; that of 
the donjon, " Never." 

Ruinous religious wars during which some 800,000 
people perished (i 559-1 578) were followed by a relapse 
of France into feudal and communal anarchy. But 
the Crown re-established internal order (1598-1659) ; 
and, in his long reign (1661-1715), Louis XIV (of 
whom Mazarin said : ** There is stuflf enough in him 
to make four kings and an honest man ") aggrandized 
all power. Under him, science, art, architecture, litera- 
ture, the refinements and elegances of aristocratic 
life, were developed in a high degree. But all that 
was done for the Crown, and was at the expense of the 
commons. Majesty, moreover, meant servility. One 

'""The French Revolution," by J. Michelet. 
229 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

had to be careful of the breath he breathed ; and it was 
dangerous to talk in one's sleep. 

Thus, Louis the Great ^^ was by no means Louis 
the Wise. He was the State. He was France. He 
was le Roi Soleil — the Sun King. He was a spend- 
thrift on money mulcted from the millions. His Ver- 
sailles venture in magnificence drew to him the nobles, 
and gave him the whip-hand over them ; but they were 
worth more to France away from him than with him. 
Sycophants multiplied. Court crimes bred in the atmos- 
phere of scandal. Then, too, for all the glory bought 
with gold somebody must pay; and for all the sins 
in the gilded palace somebody would suffer at once as 
well as in after-time. Saint-Simon, who said the 
Court *' sweated hypocrisy " ; Vauban, who died soon 
after the rejection of his plan for the institution of a 
royal tithe to be collected from noble, priest and 
commoner alike ; Colbert ^- whose heart was broken, 
because of his failure to find remedies for evils rife 
in the state ; Fenelon ^^ who as Duruy declares redis- 
covered when exiled to Greece, the simple truth of 
democracy " that governments are made for the gov- 
erned " — all these far-seeing men had powerful adum- 
brations of the mighty storm brewing in the Kingdom 
of France. When Colbert had gone, writes Cecil 
Headlam, Louis was soon borrowing at 400 per cent. 
Deficit followed deficit. The tax-farmer only was 



" In her " France," Lady Morgan depicts Louis XIV as 
seated between his mistresses — favorite and ex-favorite — lis- 
tening to the recitations of Boileau and Racine. And they 
recited ' 'The History of Louis Le Grand," commanded by 
himself, planned by his mistress and executed by two pensioned 
poets. What a combination ! 

'-The great Jean Baptiste Colbert, who, in 1681, said, " One 
can go on no longer." But the evils he saw lived for a hundred 
years after that. Colbert tried to equalize tax burdens. He 
felt the injustice of the taille. 

"Fenelon said, in 1709, " The old machine Avill break up at 
the first shock." The public debt in 1715 was 2,400,000,000 livres. 

230 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

prosperous. Since the burden-bearing people of France 
were staggering more and more under burdens progres- 
sively heavier, the end could be naught but bankruptcy. 
But, strange to say, those despotic times were 
" unmarked by rebellions." " No people," Michelet 
reminds us, *' ever had fewer. This nation loved her 
masters ; she had no rebellion — nothing but a Revolu- 
tion." Louis Blanc calls it " the Burgher Revolution 
of 1789." He narrows it, but stresses this particular 
proposition. He is laboring to make us distinguish 
between burghers and peasants. " The vile persons of 
the vulgar," said Loiseau in his " Traite des Ordres," 
'' had no right to be qualified as burghers. The proof is : 
they had no share in the honors of the city, nor voice in 
its assemblies, in which burgherism consists." The 
burgher was the privileged man of the *' bourg " — the 
city. He had a voice in the commune. " By means of the 
communes, burgherism overthrew the feudal system." 
But if the vulgar were vile, w^ho made them so ? Who 
enslaved them ? " Richelieu had no bowels for the 
people ; and judged burgherism as a great lord would. 
He compared the people to mules who were spoiled by 
quiet." Yet, in spite of himself, he cleared the way 
by which burgherism was to advance in France. " For 
these great men are but powerful blind men. The part 
which they play is rarely their own." Richelieu took 
away political power from the nobles ^* as he did 



" Armand Duplessis de Richelieu, Bishop of Lugon, then 
29, was orator of the clergy at the meeting of the States Gen- 
eral in Paris, Oct. 14, 1614. Not until 1789 did this body 
again sit. The nobles gave trouble. They refused to recog- 
nize the Third Estate as on a par with themselves. They 
demanded " the suppression of the paulette, which, in establish- 
ing hereditary offices, had inaugurated the noblesse de robe." 
France now had the haughty, ancient nobles and the office- 
holding nobles. The Third Estate demanded a general as- 
sembly every ten years, an equable system of taxation, abolition 
of sinecures and other reforms, which, if adopted, might have 
saved France from the terrible convulsions of 1789-1794. 

231 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

from the Parlement of Paris, made up of hereditary 
lawyers. Let us not Hken our legislative parliament, or 
congress, to the parliaments of the French cities. We 
shall confuse things if we do. In France the parliament 
was, in the main, a court. That the Paris Parlement 
had the right to record, or refuse to record, the King's 
edicts is another matter. And it may be noted, in pass- 
ing — for we must get along — that the Fronde ^^ (so 
named from a children's game, Fronde, sling, cata- 
pult) was due to the refusal of the Paris Parle- 
ment, seeking to check wasteful administration, to 
register edicts. 

In encouraging literature and industry Louis XIV 
(as Victor Duruy tells us) " fostered two forces 
destined to overturn absolutism itself." A new criti- 
cism, a new philosophy, appeared as the abuses of the 
absolute monarch continued during the long period of 
Louis XV — regency and reign (1715-1774) — Voltaire 
was heard ; then Rousseau ; then the encyclopedists and 
economists. The contrat Social came out (1762). 
" Voltaire seduced our imaginations," wrote La Fay- 
ette's friend, the Comte de Segur ; " Rousseau touched 
our hearts." It was Voltaire versus the Hardness of 
Creed, and Rousseau versus the Hardness of despots. 
Voltaire was the first to use the word " patriot " in its 
present significance.^^ Moreover, Montesquieu's *' Let- 
tres Persanes " were filled with the new spirit. There 
had begun to be a strong " appeal from ancient law 
to reason and free will." The wits, too, were sowing 
seeds that would by and by germinate in unexpected 
places. Our M. de Beaumarchais, for instance. His 
** Marriage of Figaro" (Comedie Frangaise, 1784) is 
regarded as " that drama which caught the colors of 

^''The second Fronde (1649-1653) was an affair of the 
nobles, who were after pensions and sinecures. 

" " Literary Journeys in France," by M. Betham Edwards. 
232 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

the Revolutionary dawn before the sun had risen." ^^ 
Observers foresaw a great overturn. Lord Chester- 
field said : " All the signs I have encountered in history 
as forerunners of great revolutions at present exist in 
France, and are every day increasing." 

As we have seen, the nobles and clergy were without 
legislative and executive power. Under Richelieu and 
Louis XIV they became less helpful to France and 
more a burden. " Louis XV," says M. Duruy, " having 
destroyed the great body of the magistracy, what 
remained to support the old edifice and protect the 
monarch?" In 1771 more than 700 magistrates were 
sent into exile. Maupeon then formed a new Parle- 
ment. Taxes increased in 171 5 to 365,000,000. " Mat- 
ters will go on as they are as long as I live," said 
Louis XV ; " my successor may get out of the difficulty 
as well as he can." Echoing which, spoke Madame: 
"After us the deluge" {Apres nous le deluge). 
" When I was first presented to his Majesty, Louis XV," 
wrote La Fayette [then fourteen],*! well remember the 
eldest son of the Church, the King of France and 
Navarre, seated at the table between a Bishop and a 
prostitute. At the same table was seated an aged 
philosopher " — Voltaire. ^^ Mme. de Pompadour died 
in 1764 ; Mme. du Barry by the guillotine ; we have seen 
how Louis XV died and now we come to Louis, the 
Irresolute. ^^ This Louis put his hand to his head as the 
crown was being placed upon it at Rheims, saying, " It 
hurts me." " It pricks me," Henry III had exclaimed. 

""The French Revolution and Enghsh Literature," by 
Edward Dowden. 

" " A revolutionist in religion, he did not understand 
that there could be such a thing in politics."—" French Revolu- 
tion of 1789," by Louis Blanc. 

^"Now in mentioning his (the King's) virility, it is of 
prime importance for the student to remember, though the 
matter can be touched upon but lightly, that Louis in this de- 
partment of physical life suffered from a mechanical impedi- 
ment which gravely distorted the first years of his marriage, 

233 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Thus we are at the beginning of the reign in which 
the heavens opened ; and we may well sum up : 

" The three orders of the state — clergy, nobility and 
plebeians — were distinguished by privileges or burdens 
which made the French people three different nations, 
each having its hierarchy and its distinct classes." 
So concludes M, Duruy, adding: ''There was the 
greater and the lesser nobility — the one living at court 
and upon the national budget, the other in the provinces 
and on its own meagre revenues ; the upper and the 
lower clergy — the former rich, the latter poor. Among 
the non-noble classes, fifty thousand families possessing 
hereditary offices of judicature formed a real autoc- 
racy -^ which did not mix with the financiers ; the 
middle class scorned the artisan, and the peasant at 
the bottom of the ladder, in poverty and ignorance bore 
angrily all the weight of the society which was 
crushing him." The intendants were of the noblesse 
de robe, hereditary officeholders. Each intendant, abso- 
lute in his own district, had an army of underlings. 
*'Socias" wrote La Bruyere, in '* The Characters of 
Manners of the Present Age," " got to be under- 
farmer of the revenues, and by extortion, violence and 
abusing his trust, is now advanced on the ruins of 
several families to a high post. He is ennobled by his 
station, and wants nothing now but honesty." Here 
is de Tocqueville again : " Taxation fell not upon those 
who could best pay it but upon those who could least 

which undoubtedly wounded his self-respect, and which was 
perhaps the only thing which caused him permanent anxiety. 
He was cured by medical aid in the summer of 1777, but he 
had already been three years a King and seven years married 
before that relief came. — Hilaire Belloc. 

^ The hereditary nobility were the noblesse de race. The 
noblesse de robe (of the bourgeoisie class) had established its 
hereditary character by virtue of its money and the paulette — 
so called from Charles Paulet, who farmed this source of 
revenue under Sully. By this system officials named their own 
successors, paying succession duties to the Crown. 

234 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

escape it." The old nobility " lived largely on pen- 
sions ; they were gilded drones ; the King paid their 
debts." And here is Michelet again : " Some of the 
bread eaten in France was made of fern. Famine 
stalked." The Bishop of Chatres told old Fleury that 
" in his diocese men browsed with the sheep." " The 
evil consists in this, that the nation from the highest 
to the lowest is organized so as to go on producing 
less and less and paying more and more." " The 
desert expands," in spite of the fact that " men, women 
and children yoke themselves to the plow . . ." 
" The yearly produce no longer suffices for the year." 
People thanked God when Louis XIV died; and then 
when they were through with the Regent, who sold 
the honor of France to England, again they thanked 
God. Once more they gave thanks on account of the 
passing of another King, who had seemed destined 
to live forever. The peasant was reduced by the taille, 
or direct tax ; the gahelle, or salt tax ; the corvee, or 
enforced labor ; the droit de chasse, involving his lord's 
right to gallop over and trample down his crops; his 
church and seignorial duties, and many another 
burden, until in thousands of instances he had 
come to possess but an impoverished scrap of land. 
'' Corvees were used not always to build roads, 
but as a pretext to send off husbands and fathers." 
The peasants' animals were requisitioned like- 
wise. The peasant must not weed in t.gg time. 
His manure " must not injure the flavor of my lord's 
game." The noble, says Watson, " is still lord of 
the dove-cote, the rabbit-warren and the fish-pond. 
He must have his toll out of the wine, the provisions, 
the passing merchandise. His detested rights shadow 
the bridge, the mill, the public fair, the public scales, 
the oven, the wine-press. He is the hawk of the 
community, soaring aloft and pouncing down on the 

235 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

natives for his living." ^^ In addition to private pillage 
by lords of the land and the church, and the stupid 
system of legalized brigandage under which the fermiers 
generaiix taxed people to line their own pockets — a 
thing done in the King's name and, therefore, all the 
more outrageous — the commons suffered also from the 
depredations of bandits and assassins who traveled in 
gangs. Salt smugglers ranged the country, which, 
with its 26,000,000 people — 130,000 ecclesiastics and 
130,000 nobles. — was now too surcharged with misery 
to remain longer unprotesting. Louis Blanc loves to 
dwell upon the patience of the French, as well as upon 
that " luminous good sense which is the very foundation 
of the Gallic genius." 

Well, patience was now passing ; and so, too, might 
good sense pass. *' Sire," said the Duke of Richelieu 
to the newl3^-crowned King, *' under Louis XIV no 
one dared utter a word; under Louis XV they whis- 
pered ; under your Majesty, they talk aloud." 

Yet there was little, if any, downright disloyalty 
when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became King 
and Queen. Apparently there was joy. But we have 
seen how Marie Antoinette played an untactful and 
provocative part — a defiant and scornful part, indeed; 
and we have also seen how she was harried and 
maligned and made out to be ever so much worse than 
she was. They were in trouble — the King and the 
Queen ; she, the " Austrian," and he the Capet picked 
out by Fate to pay the enormous bill of accumulated 
Capet iniquities. Their costly coronation was a scandal- 
breeder. As for the ministry, Maurepas was " old and 
useless." So it was said ; but he brought back Parle- 
ment ; and soon Lamoignon de Malesherbes, "an admir- 
able man," and Turgot (Anne Robert Jacques, Baron 
de I'Aulne, 1 727-1 781) were called in. Vergennes and 

^ " The Story of France," by Thomas E. Watson. 
236 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

Saint Germain already are known to us. Turgot had 
been a shy, studious, somewhat slow youth ; but, as an 
intendant of the provinces of Limousin, Angoumois, 
and Basse-Marche, he had developed into a true states- 
man.-^ The Intendant was the real ruler in France. 
In " L'Ancien Regime" De Tocqueville quotes what 
Law, the hero of the most " iridescent of bubbles," 
said to the Marquis d'Argenson : " Do you know that 
this Kingdom of France is governed by thirty intend- 
ants? You have neither Parliaments nor Estates nor 
Governors. It is upon thirty Masters of Requests, 
despatched into the provinces, that their evil or their 
good, thdir fertility or their sterility, entirely depend." 
Thirty such intendants as Turgot might have saved 
France. He alone might have staved off revolution if 
his proposed reforms had been carried out. But " if " 
is both a little word and a big word. On a grand scale 
Turgot wanted to survey and assess and equalize. With 
a land tax on the clergy and nobility, and the corvees 
abolished, the people, long prostrate, could rise and 
breathe. Gradual self-government was to be given 
them; they were to have uniform laws, weights and 
measures ; they were to enjoy public education, liberty 
of conscience, liberty of worship. In fine, by the 
suppression of evils and abuses and the enactment of 
beneficient laws Turgot -^ was on the eve of regenerat- 
ing France. But the meddlesome Queen attacked him ; 
the intriguing Maurepas " undermined " him ; the 
unsteadfast King removed him. Thus Turgot, a great 
economist like Adam Smith, a great law-giver, was 
succeeded as Comptroller-General by M. de Cluny, 
a great nobody, a great spendthrift and instituter of 
lotteries ; who, in turn, was succeeded by Jacques 

" " Life of Turgot," by W. W. Stephens. See also Lord 
Acton's " French Revolution." 

^ Turgot said, " Let mankind be free and let each country 
enjoy the pecuhar advantages bestowed on her by nature." 

237 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Necker (i 732-1 793). And now Necker! This celeb- 
rity was de facto Comptroller-General; but ineligible 
as a Protestant to sit with the other ministers, and, 
therefore, director of finance. Sainte-Beuve says he 
was " a thinker by nature," and so he was, no doubt ; 
but with him it was largely a case of think-all and 
do-naught. True, he put forward his famous Compte 
rendu, claiming an excess of revenue of ten millions; 
true, also, that he floated loans and planned reforms. 
Yet he seemed to juggle. Privilege began to hate him 
for his plans. He was soon " surrounded by intrigues, 
embarrassments and discontent." When Necker went 
out, M. Joly de Fleury came in, then d'Ormesson -* 
and next, thanks to the money-hungry Polignacs and 
Marie Antoinette, the spendthrift Charles Alexandre 
de Calonne entered into power ( 1 734-1 802) . One might 
say " burst upon the scene," or " vaulted into the 
ring." We find in him the very antithesis of Turgot, 
who would not crook a knee to the Queen. He was 
stern ; and she, for her part, had no idea of the sterling 
qualities of his remedial statesmanship. Turgot was a 
God-sent man, a profound statesman; Calonne was a 
suave, time-serving, insincere, profligate man, who 
smoothed and oiled the way onward — to ruin. " His 
lofty stature, his easy carriage, his grace, the mobility 
of his agreeable and fine figure contributed to gain 
the great world for him." '' All Paris," adds Louis 
Blanc, '* knew that one day Calonne had sent pistachio 
nuts wrapped in the notes of the bank of discount to 
certain ladies. Complaisance was erected into a sys- 
tem." This was about the time of the affair of the 
" collier," the diamond necklace — sent by the Cardinal 

** Henry Frangois de Saul Le Fevre d'Ormesson d'Aam- 
bouille (1751-1807) was of the famous office-holding 
Ormessons, famille de robe, known in the public life of 
France for three centuries. His equally distinguished brother 
was guillotined. 

238 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

de Rohan to Marie Antoinette, " the miserable affair," 
Talleyrand called it, adding, " I should not be sur- 
prised if it overturned the monarchy.-'' The Queen was 
a victim, the Cardinal a dupe and the La Mottes crimi- 
nals." It did not help matters that Mme. La Motte 
had Valois blood in her veins. The triumphs of the 
Cardinal's party over the King and Queen was a 
strange com^mentary on the Court's standing — its old 
prestige was going or gone. There was a taint in the 
air; and Calonne was but one among many brilliant 
charlatans of his class and calling. " There were 
those," writes Louis Blanc, " who said with a smile on 
their lips, * God keep us from honest men.' " In short 
order, Calonne borrowed 500,000,000 francs and ran 
the annual deficit up to 100,000,000. 

To observers less sanguine than La Fayette, it was 
evident that the Government's demoralization was 
chronic. He was full of hope. In a letter to John 
Adams, October, 1787, he wrote : 

" The affairs of this country considered in a con- 
stitutional light are mending fast. The minds of the 
nation have made great progress. Opposition is not 
of course free from party spirit. . . . This country 
will, within twelve or fifteen years, come to a pretty 
good constitution, not the best perhaps that can be 
framed but one. ... I think a representation will 
be obtained in France much better than the one now 
existing in England." 

To Washington he wrote : 

"The King is all-powerful ; he possesses all the means 
of compulsion, of punishment, of corruption. The 
ministers naturally incline and believe themselves bound 
to preserveMespotism. The court is filled with swarms 
of vile and effeminate courtiers, men's minds are ener- 

^ " It did not overturn the monarchy," comments Watson 
("The Story of France"), "but it disclosed the weakness of 
royal influence, the intense ill-will borne the Queen and the 
fatal feuds among the natural defenders of the crown." Vol. 
ii, p. 118. 

239 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

vated by the influence of women and the love of 
pleasure, the lower classes are plunged in ignorance. 
On the other hand, French character is lively, enterpris- 
ing and inclined to despise those who govern. The 
public mind begins to be enlightened by the works of 
philosophers and the example of the other nations. 
The inhabitants of the distant provinces are disgusted 
with the despotism and extravagance of the court, 
so that there is a strange contrast between the Oriental 
jx)wer of the King, the care of the minister to pre- 
serve it intact, the intrigues and servility of a race of 
courtiers on the one hand and on the other, the general 
freedom of thought, of conversation and of writing, in 
spite of the spies, the Bastille, and the press laws. The 
spirit of opposition and patriotism diffused through the 
highest class of the nation, including the personal ser- 
vants of the King, mingled with the fear of losing their 
places and pensions ; the derisive insolence of the 
populace of the cities (always ready, it is true, to 
disperse before a detachment of the guards) and the 
more serious discontent of the rural population — all 
these ingredients mingled together will bring us little 
by little, without a great convulsion, to an independent 
representation and, consequently, to a diminution of the 
royal authority. But it is a matter of time, and will 
proceed the more slowly that the interests of powerful 
men will clog the wheels." 

Did La Fayette feel certain compunctions with 
respect to the piling up of the great debt? Did he 
remember that America was, in a sense, partly the 
cause of the huge accumulation? He probably did. 
But Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris, did not trouble 
himself about the debt, nor did he mince matters in 
speaking of the King. He wrote to John Jay (October, 
1787): "Louis XVI hunts one-half the (day and is 
drunk the other. The King goes for nothing." And 
the same year he wrote to John Adams : " It is urged 
principally against the King that his revenue is 130,- 
000,000 francs more than that of his predecessor, yet he 
demands 120,000,000 further." 

240 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

It looked as though M. de Calonne would hardly 
last the year out. But he did. He, of all men, sud- 
denly turned reformer. " He proposed to subject the 
privileged classes to a tax and the payment of a sub- 
sidy based on land; to diminish the taille; to decree 
the freedom of grain." Then the beneficiaries of the 
vast suicidal system turned upon Calonne. He knew 
them of old. He smiled. There was one doorway 
open for him — and he passed out of his ministerial 
cul-de-sac by that exit. He advised (June, 1786) the 
convocation of the Notables. Henry H and Louis XHI 
had brought them together — cardinals, archbishops, 
princes of the blood, grand seigneurs, gentlemen and 
presidents of the provincial parlements. Why should 
not Louis XVI, since vital problems must be solved? 
Louis — not a bad man as bad men go, but not an able 
man, either; a well-meaning man, w^eak, vacillating, 
under the Capetian curse, under the ponderous Capetian 
burden — hesitated a long time ; and then, on December 
29, issued his proclamation assembling the Notables. 
Next day he wrote to Calonne : " I have not slept a 
wink all night, but it was for joy." Very soon he was 
in another mood. Vergennes died on January 12, and 
Louis at the grave said : *' How happy should I be to 
repose at your side." 

On February 22, 1787, the Notables met in the ban- 
queting hall at Versailles. There were 144 of them 
representing nobility, parliament, clergy and the third 
estate. They sat in seven sections, each section or 
bureau presided over by a prince of the blood. The 
Comte d'Artois, whose extravagances were notorious, 
was president of the bureau to which La Fayette was 
assigned. It seems that La Fayette was slightly under 
the age required by the laws of France (he was 30) ; 
but in his case, the regulations were suspended. He 
soon made his presence felt. Calonne, for his part, 
16 241 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

was " cunning, witty, bold and easy." He confessed 
to an enormous deficit ; but kept back part of his stun- 
ning tale. There was one remedy : It was the abolition 
of exemptions, privileges and abuses. The Notables 
themselves and all their class must make sacrifices. It 
had always come to that during recent ministries and 
it would continue to come to that. Turgot knew. Necker 
knew, but Necker's figures were false. Anger arose in 
the hall, at court, in Paris. The Queen called Calonne 
a lunatic. She herself was hissed at the opera as 
" Madame Deficit." The King smashed a chair in a fit 
of rage, crying : " That knave Calonne deserves I 
should hang him ! " The Notables wanted to discuss 
the deficit ; Calonne harped on the necessity of freeing 
France from the paralysis of Privilege. And the upshot 
was that he speedily quit Paris on lettres de cachet, exil- 
ing him to Lorraine. He was willing to be hanged, he 
said, if all the rest of those deserving the rope should 
hang with him. Calonne, of course, was fighting for 
his political life. La Fayette fought at the same ses- 
sion for human betterment. His first address pro- 
voked the King, who resented some of his statements, 
adding that such attacks should be signed. After that 
La Fayette put his name to the addresses read by him. 
He argued : 

" The millions that are dissipated are raised by 
taxation, and taxation can only be justified by the real 
needs of the state. All the millions which are given 
up to depredation or to cupidity are the fruit of the 
sweat, of the tears and even the blood of the people; 
and a calculation of the amount of misery caused by 
the collection of sums so lightly wasted would seem ter- 
rible tO' the justice and goodness which we know 
to be his Majesty's natural sentiments." 

La Fayette, as one sees, had little of Calonne's 
wit, and none of Mirabeau's fire. He is stranger to 
the epigram. His language is too measured and solemn 

242 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

to stir the blood. Nevertheless it fits his theme. One 
of his biographers. Bayard Tuckerman, declares that 
he " attached undue importance to outward honors and 
public favor. A victory seemed incomplete to him 
unless followed by sufficient applause. That he mistook 
prominence for greatness and praise for fame was 
largely due to thq unfortunately early age at which he 
had become accustomed to extraordinary popularity." 
But whatever La Fayette's lack of oratorical impres- 
siveness in the Assembly of the Notables, there is no 
question as to the value and effect of his ideas and 
words. He did not know that those very thoughts and 
words were as so many seeds of revolution. He aimed 
at cleansing the kingdom of all that was false and foul. 
To quote from Tuckerman, he asked the King: 

To name some fixed sum for his private and military 
establishment, for the support of the royal family, and 
for gifts. 

To do away with costly ceremonies no longer valued 
and only derived from tradition. 

To give each office a fixed salary, instead of allow- 
ing certain perquisites which enabled them to extend 
indefinitely the amount of their remuneration. 

To insist on the keeping of regular accounts. 

To give pensions and regular gifts only as a recom- 
pense for public service. 

To abolish the custom of anticipating the revenue. 

Urging the reform of the criminal law and the 
restoration of rights to Protestants, he rebuked " the 
devouring luxury of the court " ; arraigned the 
crown for economic and financial stupidity ; denounced 
the taille; and, finally, demanded the convocation of the 
National Assembly. 

" What, sir ! " exclaimed the Comte d'Artois ; ** you 
ask the convocation of the States-General ? " 

" Yes, Monseigneur, and even more than that." 

** You wish that I write, and that I carry to the 
243 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

King: ' M. de La Fayette moves to convoke the 
States-General? ' " 

*' Yes, Monseigneur." 

*' His was the only name attached to the demand," 
says Tuckerman ; " but it contained his ruling thought, 
destined to be realized — a representative body in 
France, such as existed in England and America. The 
suggestion received by the Notables with astonishment 
was rapidly taken up by the people and soon became 
a fixed thought in the public mind." 

** Sirs ! " cried the Due de Pasquier, of the Paris 
Parlement ; '* this is not child's play ; the first time 
that France sees the States-General she will also see 
a terrible revolution." 

When Calonne was sent out, his enemy Brienne was 
brought in. The Queen favored him. He was Lomenie 
de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse. The Parlement 
of Paris antagonized him — refused to register the stamp 
tax and land tax edicts obnoxious to the privileged 
orders. Counsellor D'Espremenil of the Parlement, 
Brienne's chief disputant, was borne in triumph through 
the streets of Paris. Banished to Troyes, Parlement 
agreed to register a loan and was brought back to Paris. 
Said D'Espremenil : ** We went out covered with glory, 
we returned covered with mud." Other Parlements 
balked Brienne, who was given a red hat and sent 
away. His end was tragic enough in the coming great 
time of tragedies. A mob broke into his palace ; drank 
his wines ; next day he gave up the ghost. 

Back came Necker now — the man whose motto was 
" Credit is the salvation of states." He came in on 
August 25, and funds at once rose 30 per cent. But 
on August 8 the King had summoned the States-Gen- 
eral to meet on May i, 1789; and that evidence of 
enforced liberalism and reform may have had much 
to do with the temporary return of confidence. It was 

244 



BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 

Necker and a New France. In the early stages of his 
second ministry, Necker himself seemed liberalized. 
His new plan proposed (a) suppression of the lettres 
de cachet; {b) liberty of the press; (c) double repre- 
sentation for the third estate, and (d) the periodical 
reassembling of the States-general. 

Meantime the man who had first demanded that the 
King take the sense of France by the election of depu- 
ties to a States-General was busy with the organization 
of the National Party. La Fayette was a recognized 
leader in the movement. With him were associated 
the Abbe Sieyes, the Comte de Mirabeau, Talleyrand 
and others of like celebrity. Its creed was the destruc- 
tion of privilege, the equalization of taxes and the 
establishment of a constitutional government some- 
what on the model of England. It was not averse 
to a monarch ; but '' the power of the King was to be 
limited and a periodical deliberative assembly was to 
control taxation." Things were very different from 
what they had been only a few years before in the days 
of the light-hearted old Comte de Maurepas, " tapping 
his golden snufif-box and uttering declamations about 
the rights of man." The time for misgoverning in the 
country and philosophizing in the town had passed. 
" The army was affected, the ministry was divided, 
the King despised, the Queen hated." But it should 
be kept in mind that, at this period of the organization 
of a considerable party in behalf of a Constitutional 
France, the privileged classes and vested interests as 
a rule continued to oppose the reform programmes. 
La Fayette went down into Auvergne to contest for a 
seat in the States-General and was elected as a noble. 
He found that part of France traversed by him 
greatly disturbed. Brienne had instituted nineteen pro- 
vincial assemblies. *' Under each assembly of the 
arrondissement were parish assemblies. The whole 

245 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

machinery of administration had been changed."'^ 
There were conflicts of authority. Villages were 
aroused. Peasants were set brooding. Again the 
Notables met (October 5) to advise with the Crown 
concerning the States-General. These unwonted happen- 
ings added to the apprehension of patriotic Frenchmen. 
But nature herself seemed to take a turn against tor- 
mented France. Not only was there a dearth, with poor 
crops, but on the 13th of July came the most devastat- 
ing hailstorm ever recorded. Taine tells that through- 
out sixty leagues of the most fertile territory, from 
Normandy to Champagne, the hail did damage to the 
amount of 100,000,000 francs. It out-Calonned 
Calonne. Then followed the severest winter experi- 
enced since 1709. The temperature reached 18^ ° 
below zero ; the Seine was frozen from Paris to Havre ; 
a third of the olive trees died in the south of France ; 
floods swept the Rhone country and in the spring of 
1789 famine stalked, while beggars multiplied. There 
was much hunger in Paris. Crowds besieged the 
bakers' shops which gave out blackish bread, earthy 
and bitter, that caused throat-and-bowel trouble. That 
winter and spring there were three hundred outbreaks 
in France. '* Why ? " asks Taine ; and he answers : 
*' The reason is that under the ancien regime the con- 
flagration was smouldering in a closed chamber; the 
great door is suddenly opened, the air enters and imme- 
diately the flame breaks out." -^ "Intendants and 
sub-delegates everywhere call for aid." Dealers in 
contraband salt, " poachers, vagabonds, beggars and 
escaped convicts " increased in numbers. There were 
riots in the provinces. " Reforms have been announced 
and people think them accomplished." In a word, the 
Revolution has begun to roll of its own accord. 

** Taine. 

" " Taine," vol. i, p. 9. 

246 



VI 

LA FAYETTE IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Our story now moves forward on a somewhat 
swifter current, with fewer shoals, less encumbering 
detail, less debris. Yet we must look sharply as we 
sweep along; grasp dates, grasp data; and let little 
in the whirling flotsam escape us, even though we can 
give that little but a passing glance. It is now 1789^ — 
the great year — annus mirabilis. The motto of aspiring 
mankind is salus populi suprema est lux. Philos- 
ophers stoop to chalk the aspiration on the pavement. 
" It is no longer a question of what has been," said 
Mirabeau, " but what will be." Rejected by the nobil- 
ity, this powerful orator had come into the combat 
as a deputy of the Third Estate. 

Abbe Sieyes,^ whom La Fayette knew well, like- 
wise looked to the future. He was " a subtle clear- 
headed, thorough-going priest." He had just put forth 
a pamphlet in which he said.: *' What is the Third 
Estate? The nation. What is it now? Nothing. 
What ought it to be? Everything." This Third 
Estate had but twenty-seven representatives in the 
Assembly of Notables ; in the States-General it would 
have 600 in a membership of 1274. Every taxpayer 
in France had a vote. Servants had none. A poor 
vicar's vote counted for as much as a cardinal's. More- 
over, Necker had given the people the right to petition 
for redress of grievances. This was a most important 
concession, as viewed by La Fayette. But Necker 
thought he could sway the people. Such great num- 

*" Behold him, the light, thin man; cold, but elastic, 
wiry; instinct with the pride of Logie ; passionless, or with 
but one passion, that of self-conceit." — Carlyle, " The 
French Revolution." 

247 



THE TRUE LA PAYETTE 

bers of tliem had kissed his hand. Napoleon blamed 
Necker with bringing on the Revolution. Through 
their cahiers, or letters of instruction, the voters asked 
the deputies to give France moral, economic and politi- 
cal liberty. That was the composite thought — the bur- 
den, the plea, the demand. 

May-day, 1789, found the deputies of the States- 
General gathering at Versailles. It seemed a bright 
day for France. At last the old era was over, a new 
one was opening. Now would evil die, now would the 
good come to its own. For fertile and beautiful France 
was not herself at fault ; the gross fault was in privilege 
and in that long-continued misrule begot by privilege. 
So thought many as they acclaimed the great convoca- 
tion of deputies — those of the Third Estate chosen 
under almost universal suffrage, by 3,000,000 untitled, 
unprivileged Frenchmen. On a bright Sunday, May 4, 
all marched in solemn procession to the Church of 
St. Louis. The old costumes of 16 14 had been pre- 
scribed. So the commoners wore plain mantles and 
unf eathered hats ; the nobles, in gold-trimmed mantles, 
had white plumes, and the clergy were in their rich 
regalia. On the 5th the deputies assembled in the 
Salle des Menus Plaisirs. Good Americans, with a 
memory for dates, will recall that this was five days 
after George Washington was inaugurated President of 
the United States. It would seem that, after coinci- 
dent turmoil of long duration, two peoples on earth had 
now at last coincidently emerged from misrule and 
misery. But in France this happiness was not to be.- 
" Unfortunately," says Victor Duruy, " a people 
separates itself from its past only at the cost of 
cruel lacerations." 

At the opening session a Turgot probably would 
have offered the deputies a constitution, hammered out 
in the smithy of his own brain ; and ready for their 

248 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

approval, amendment or condemnation. On this first 
day, Necker offered them nothing but a long speech that 
wearied them. Discord developed. It was kept up 
for five weeks. Trees were flowering; birds were 
singing; but there was famine in France. And Privi- 
lege still felt itself all-powerful. The rich clerg}-, the 
drones of the noblesse held themselves aloof from the 
common clay. They would not sit with the unlordly 
ones. Each order must have a place of its own. Thus 
ofifish, thus insolent, the two aristocratic marplots looked 
to the Crown to browbeat the commons ; or trick them ; 
or, in some way superciliously put them out of coun- 
tenance. The real hitch was that joint deliberation 
would mean a majority for the reformers — separate 
deliberation, a majority for the privileged classes. 
What Privilege had hoped for was that the deputies 
would raise enough money to keep the Kingdom from 
bankruptcy, and then go home. They did something 
altogether different. We shall come to this in a little 
while; but, just here, we ought to look about us for 
La Fayette. He sat with his order as deputy from 
Riom, in Auvergne. He had walked with the nobles 
in the grand procession ; and here, for the last time, was 
encumbered with his *' feudal baggage." The fine trap- 
pings of the noblesse and clergy were in contrast with 
the plain black garb and white neckties of the deputies 
of the Third Estate. Other things must have been 
similarly distasteful to La Fayette. His position as a 
man of sense was anomalous. He wished to minimize 
on regalia and lordliness and all the mockeries of the 
ancien regime that he might lay stress upon the essen- 
tials of life, liberty, and the happiness of mankind. 
As it was, he made the best of the situation. He moved 
in the assembly of nobles that they unite with the Third 
Estate. The motion was lost by a vote of i88 to 47. 
What should he now do? Go over to the commons of 

249 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

his own accord, or with the forty-seven adherents of the 
Duke of Orleans? Would the forty-seven, or some 
of them, follow him? No doubt these and kindred 
questions were debated in his own mind, and among 
his friends, during those five uncertain weeks when 
the affairs of the States-General hung in the balance. 
We may be sure that La Fayette was distrustful of the 
Duke of Orleans. Jefferson advised La Fayette to join 
the Third Estate. " If he delayed too long in taking 
up the cause of the commons, that party would receive 
his advances with suspicion." Gouverneur Morris 
advised La Fayette to give up his seat among the 
nobles. He could not conscientiously go with them 
and he could not conscientiously carry out the instruc- 
tions given him in Auvergne. Later, Morris wrote : 

" At dinner I sit next to M. de La Fayette, who 
tells me I injure the cause, for that my sentiments are 
continually quoted against the good party. I seized 
this opportunity to tell him that I am opposed to the 
democracy from regard to liberty; that I see that they 
are going headlong to destruction, and would fain stop 
them if I could ; that their views respecting this nation 
are totally inconsistent with the materials of which 
it is composed, and that the worst thing which could 
happen would be to grant their wishes. He tells me 
that he is sensible that his party are mad, and tells 
them so, but is not the less determined to d'.e with them. 
I tell him that I think it would be quite as well to bring 
them to their senses and live with them." 

La Fayette did not relish the unsympathetic analysis 
of this well-meaning American - who knew the need 
of checks and balances in all governments managed by 

*" Jefferson and I differ in our systems of politics. He 
with all the leaders of liberty here is desirous of annihilating 
distinctions of order. How far such views may be right re- 
specting mankind in general is, I think, extremely problemati- 
cal, but with respect to this nation, I am sure it is in wrong." — 
Diary of Gouverneur Morris. 

250 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

many-minded men. He was more in accord with Jef- 
ferson, as witness his "Declaration of Rights," ^ offered 
that summer in the States-General. But he did not act 
upon Jefferson's suggestion. He bided his time. The 
scene was daily changing before his eyes. The court 
became more supercilious than ever ; the commons grew 
more stubborn than ever. 

Abbe Sieyes was the man of the crisis. On Wednes- 
day, June 10, he said : " Let us cut the cable ; it is time." 
Mirabeau demurred. That evening he secretly saw 
Necker. Michelet says Mirabeau really was " an aris- 
tocrat by taste and manners, and a royalist at heart; 
he was so in fact by birth and blood. Two motives, one 

^ Declaration of Rights submitted by La Fayette to the 
Constituent Assembly. Nature made men free and equal ; the 
distinctions necessary to the social order are founded only on 
general utility. 

Every man is born with inalienable and imprescriptible 
rights ; such are : liberty of opinion, the care of his honor and 
his life, the right of property, the free disposition of his person, 
of his industry, of all his faculties, the communication of his 
thoughts by all possible means, the pursuit of well-being and 
resistance to oppression. 

The exercise of natural rights has no limits but those 
which assure the enjoyment of the same to other members 
of society. 

No man can be subjected to any laws but those assented 
to by himself or his representatives previously promulgated 
and lawfully applied. 

The principles of all sovereignty reside in the nation. No 
body of men, no individual, can have any authority which does 
not expressly emanate from it. 

All government has for its unique end the public good. 
This interest exacts that the legislative, executive and judiciary 
powers should be distinct and defined, and that organization 
should assure the free representation of citizens, the respon- 
sibility of agents and the impartiahty of judges. 

The laws should be clear, precise and uniform for 
all citizens. 

Subsidies should be freely granted and proportion- 
ately assessed. 

And the introduction of abuses and the right of succeeding 
generations necessitate the revision of every human institu- 
tion; it should be possible for the nation to have, in certain 
cases, an extraordinary convocation of deputies, of which the 
sole object should be to examine, and correct, if necessary, 
the vices of the constitution. 

251 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

grand, and the other base, likewise impelled him. 
Surrounded by greedy women, he wanted money ; and 
monarchy appeared to him with open lavish hands, 
squandering gold and favors." He would soon turn 
against the shilly-shallying King. Sieyes and La Fayette 
had faith in the deputies. Mirabeau had yet to shake 
ofif his distrust of " the sovereign aristocracy of six 
hundred persons, who might to-morrow render them- 
selves irrevocable, hereditary the day after, and end, 
like the aristocracies of every country in the world, by 
invading everything." The six hundred followed 
Sieyes ; took the name of the Communes; elected Bailly 
president, June 12, and, on the 17th, declared them- 
selves the National Assembly of France — the Constit- 
uent Assembly. More, they at once assumed the right 
of taxation. France was in debt; they would defend 
the honor of France ; they would pay the debt. 

*' The Third Estate is the nation," said Sieyes. 

Many of the clergy joined them on the 19th; but, 
on the 20th, the 600 found the door of the Salle des 
Menus shut in their faces. It was a shabby trick 
on the part of the King — this coup d'etat. Word was 
passed around that there was to be a royal session; 
and, therefore, the hall must be put in order. Rain, 
like royalty, dampened the spirits of the deputies. They 
stood around in crowds. Their umbrellas dripped. 
What should be done? — disperse and come humbly 
back when the King pleased? That was not to be 
thought of. 

Nearby, at Old Versailles, was *' a miserable, ugly, 
poor and unfurnished building," the hall of the Tennis- 
court, the Jeu-de-Paume, with hardly a bench to sit 
upon ; but it was nevertheless a meeting-place. " It 
was like the manger of a new religion — its stable of 
Bethlehem," cried the fervid Michelet. From that hour 
the Jeu-de-Paume became a shrine. Under its roof 

252^ 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

a great and solemn spectacle was witnessed : With 
uplifted hands, the throng of commoners took oath 
not to separate until they had given a Constitution to 
France. Soldiers surrounded them — yes ; but, come 
what might, it was to be so ! 

Not only did each deputy lift a hand toward heaven 
that God might see, but each oath-taker put that same 
hand to paper. At the National Archives one sees the 
book of many signatures " with the bold autograph 
of Mirabeau and the small, neat, pedantic writing of 
Robespierre." Danton's hand is " bold and round, 
with a flourish at the end." He had once signed his 
name D' Anton just as Robespierre sometimes used a 
de. Marat's calligraphy is described as " sprawling." 
La Fayette wrote a plain neat hand. Louis XVI, 
according to Alger, displayed more firmness in his 
" rather formal round hand " than in anything else. 

It is understood that Necker, rather than the King, 
was the real strategist in this attempt to shackle the 
popular representatives.'* Malouet, who acted in the 
open for the manipulating minister, brought Mirabeau 
and Necker together with the intention of breaking 
the deadlock. 

" I am told, sir," said the moral man from Geneva, 
*' that you have some propositions to make to me." 

Mirabeau's reply was short, hot and not sweet. 

" My proposition, sir, is to wish you good-day," 
and away he went boiling with rage. '' Your man is 
an ass," said he to Malouet ; *' he shall hear from me." 

Mirabeau complained of Necker : " You might as 
well make an issue in a wooden leg as give him advice ; 
for he would certainly not follow it." ^ 

* "This coup d'etat of Louis XVI was nothing save a 
precocious counter-revolution, which hastened the true revo- 
lution of the people." — "Memoirs of Bertrand Barere," Vol. I, 

p. 222. 

*"The Story of France," Watson, vol. ii, p.' 215. 
253 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Gabriel Honore Mirabeau has been described in 
somebody's amusing hyperbole as " an archangel 
ruined." Beruffled and bebuckled, with his pock- 
marks ^ and like peculiarities, he was indeed a singular 
figure. Especially did he appear virile and masterful 
when, on danger's edge in debate, he deemed it time to 
dare all for the cause in which he was embarked. 

We may as well pause for a moment to note that 
the record of the whole Mirabeau family — father, 
mother, brother, sister, wife and their numerous associ- 
ates in scandalous matters connected with courts and 
prisons would be hard to outdo. But the Mirabeaus 
were as able as they were quarrelsome. " Barrel " 
Mirabeau, however, appears not to have been over- 
stocked with mentality. He sat among the nobles and 
quarreled with his brother in the Third Estate. 

In his youth Gabriel Honore took the name Peter 
Buffiere. He mastered language, likewise music, danc- 
ing, fencing, riding. While soldiering in Corsica, he 
also was called " Peter Buffiere." He had led a life 
of escapades. His father had him put in prison more 
than once. His wife, whom he had married for money, 
had betrayed him, and he in turn ran off with the young 
wife of an old Marquis, his friend and host. The 
things told of Mirabeau blacken him as a man of 
honor, as a man of character. His debts, his debauches, 

®To an admirer, a woman, who wrote to Mirabeau ask- 
ing for his portrait, he replied : " Imagine, Madame, a tiger 
marked with small-pox and you have it." 

Abbe Gregoire, Bishop of BJois, philosopher, revolution- 
ist, philanthropist, "president of the Society of the Friends 
of the Negroes," happened in his old age to be feeding his 
fire with private papers when Lady Morgan visited him. He 
said to her: " I have just burned a parcel of billets of Mira- 
beau, which have more than once made me smile ; one in par- 
ticular, in which after discussing some great political question, 
he invites me to come off immediately and hear him play the 
tabor and pipe." Lady Morgan characterizes Mirabeau as " an 
amiable roue/' 

254 




Augustine Rischgitz 

LOUIS XVI, KING OF FRANCE 
From the portrait by Duplessis at Versailles 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

his outrageous conduct toward women kept him in 
trouble so much of the time that it was a wonder he 
could have brought his mind up to its superior state 
as a never-failing reservoir of power. And he was no 
drone. He was so busy that when those whom he 
had stung challenged him to fight, his custom was to 
jot the engagement down in his memorandum book so 
that the little afifair might not escape him. 

Mirabeau was a tall, heavily built, bulky, almost 
obese man, with a yellow skin, a large nose and great 
jaws. He was big-headed and big-brained, with hair 
like a lion's mane. This he curled and powdered and 
upon occasion shook. Lord Minton (Gilbert Elliot), 
writing to Hugh Elliot, a brother, about Mirabeau, 
said of him : " He is as overbearing in his conversation, 
as awkward in his graces, as ugly and misshapen in face 
and person, as dirty in his dress, and as perfectly self- 
satisfied as we remember him twenty years ago at 
school. I loved him, however, and so did you." 

But let us return to the great quarrel between the 
clergy and nobility on the one side and the Third Estate 
on the other : What happened after the historic Seance 
dii Jeii-de-Pamne? Next day, June 21, Louis and 
Necker appeared before the States-General. Necker's 
project then presented was intolerably tinctured with 
Privilegism ; the Crown's was a little better. The 
King read his " testament of despotism with conde- 
scension." The nobles applauded. " Silence ! Silence ! " 
came gruffly, as from the very diaphragm of the six 
hundred. The King, who had expected homage, was 
startled. But he ended insolently. " If you abandon 
me in so excellent an enterprise, I will, alone, effect 
the welfare of my people ; alone, I shall consider myself 
their true representative. ... I order you, gen- 
tlemen, to disperse immediately, and repair to-morrow 

255 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

morning to the chambers appropriated to your order, 
there to resume your sitting." 

What folly to make threat at such a time ! Despite 
the direct royal ruling, the deputies of the Third Estate 
kept their seats. Their thought was : '* We owe France 
a Constitution." The young Marquis de Breze, master 
of ceremonies, ordered the commons out. They refused 
to budge. Mirabeau blazed out upon Breze : " Go 
and tell those who send you that we are here by the will 
of the people, and are to be driven hence only by the 
power of bayonets." One can almost hear the click of 
Breze's heels as he walked backwards out of the hall. 
It was as if he had been startled into the intuitive recog- 
nition of a new majesty. Workmen entered to dis- 
mantle the hall. But when Breze had reported to the 
King, Louis said : " Very well ; leave them alone." ^ 

Of course this was equivalent to surrender. Many 
of the clergy had gone over of their own accord; the 
forty-seven nobles who had voted with La Fayette 
were now cooperating with the Third Estate ; and, on 
the 27th, the three orders were united by royal com- 
mand. Great was the hat-tossing, the jubilation. By 
its victory over nobles and clergy the Third Estate thus 
took away from them, and itself assumed, legislative 
power. The crown was not merely compromised by 
its vacillations, but involved in the general defeat of 
privilege. The first aim of the Revolutionists was 
achieved. The date of the Lit de Justice was the 23d 
of June — the day of royal discomfiture and popular 
triumph. On the 24th a majority of the clergy joined 
the victors and on the 27th a majority of nobles entered 
the hall. " The family is complete," said Bailly ; " we 
can now occupy ourselves without intermission and 
without distraction, on the subject of the reform of the 

""'Eh bien, f — , qu'ils restent!" "Oh, well, confound it, 
let them stick where tney are !" 

256 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Kingdom, and the public welfare." June had been 
a great month for mankind. 

And now ? With something done, the call was for a 
Constitution. Under it, power must not be irrespon- 
sible. Under it, there must be liberty. Both privi- 
lege for the aristocrats and despotism in the name 
of the crown must be swept away. For a time it 
seemed to the Constitutionalists that France could be 
aligned . among the free governments of the world ; 
indeed, it appeared to such men as Bailly, La Fayette 
and Lally Tollendal that the succeeding steps of reform 
could be taken with comparative ease. 

But difficulties soon began to multiply. The court- 
party was active, if secret, in its hostility; the aristo- 
cratic and rich clerical deputies were ingrained enemies 
of the people ; and the people themselves were impatient 
of those slow legislative mills that ground them good 
laws but no bread for the famishing. There was hunger 
in Paris, and sharp-toothed hunger and long-clawed 
poverty would fight in alliance with satiety and opu- 
lence against the sober and sane reformers who wished 
to take apart and discard and reconstruct without the 
shedding of blood. 

At this point, as it seems, we should underscore 
a fact of some significance with respect to the monarchi- 
cal inclination of the leaders of the French Revolu- 
tion, La Fayette included. ^ One wonders when told 

^A. Aulard, Professor of Letters at the University of 
Paris, says : "La Fayette is cited as the type of French Re- 
publican before the Revolution. Certainly the American Revo- 
lution had ' republicanised ' him, and he vaguely hoped, without 
saying so in public, that at some time in the future France would 
adopt the political system of the United States. But in 1789. as 
in 1830, he was an upholder of royalty, and we shall find him 
helping, perhaps more than any other Frenchman, to delay 
the advent of a republic in France." La. Fayette is quoted in 
A»ii dcs Lois 19th Germinal. VI, as having said: "When 
shall I see myself the Washington of France?" Aulard's 
translator, Bernard Miall, thinks that La Fayette meant to be 
" a Washington " under Louis XVI. 

J7 257 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

that all the deputies of the Third Estate, with a single 
exception, were monarchists. They had no thought 
of ridding France of Kings. They wanted justice, 
honesty, helpfulness ; but they were not republicans. 
Need we be taken aback, then, that La Fayette, in spite 
of his Jeffersonian ideas, was proceeding with the 
assumption — the most natural assumption in the world 
— that reformed France would become a Constitu- 
tional monarchy? In America the difficulty in under- 
standing this and forgiving La Fayette for his attitude 
is within ourselves. No sound American looks with 
favor upon any other than a kingless, courtless, simple 
government subject to an overturn if the people so will 
it. But we were of different stock and traditions. We 
were experimenting. Governmentally we were but a 
few weeks old at that time ; and La Fayette and those 
numerous Constitutionalists who thought as he did, 
looked to England for their model. Even radical- 
minded men cannot afiford to be unfair in this matter. 
Condemn them not — those Constitutionalists of 1789; 
the happiness of their people was dear to them. 

There is said to have been a court plan to use the 
soldiery, during the affair at the Jeu-de-Paume ; but it 
" miscarried because the nobles of La Fayette's party 
protested and threatened armed resistance." Another 
consideration : to use the mercenaries at Versailles 
against the deputies would set Paris on fire. As early 
as June 6 Bonneville (translator of Shakespeare) had 
raised the cry "To armis!" Agitation followed ; and 
continued increasingly until, on the 25th, the electors 
of Paris (those who had chosen the Paris deputies, then 
at Versailles, within easy cannon-sound) settled down 
in the hall of Saint-Jean, at the Hotel de Ville, ready 
for emergent action. The French Guards broke away 
from the barracks, where they were under surveillance, 

258 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

and fraternized with the people. Hoche (pacifier of 
La Vendee) and Marceau, who grew to be great sol- 
diers, were among them — one a sergeant, the other a 
private; neither would have been heard of but that 
the Revolution overturned the army barriers put up 
for the benefit of men of long lineage. The French 
Guards, set free by the people, began to bite their 
thumbs at the Swiss and the Germans. For were not 
these hirelings being used against liberty at Versailles? 
Were they not all around the session-hall ready to do 
their bloody work when Marie Antoinette should cry 
*' thumbs down " ? The Palais Royal was the place 
of meeting, and fraternization. The Palais Royal 
was History's own. Built by Cardinal Richelieu, it 
was first called Hotel Richelieu or Palais Cardinal. 
Mazarin planned and plotted in it. Since 1692, when 
Louis XIV gave it to Philip of Orleans, it had been 
owned by the Dukes of Orleans. The Regent Duke's 
famous and infamous fetes were held there. Law's 
bubble was blown in it. Now with Egalite its master, 
it became Palais Egalite and was a hotbed of plots. 
The day the coup d'etat failed (June 23) the Duke 
of Orleans believed the King lost, and himself King 
on the morrow, or the next day ; " he could not conceal 
his joy." He knew that " an attempted violence, like 
the unhappy King's, is either a victory or a suicide." 
He was the richest man in France — this Duke. Bald, 
bloated, " his face brick-colored and spotty," he had 
" absolutely boxed the compass of vice." Again : " He 
was a wornout libertine, sated with lust and turning 
to politics as a diversion." ^ With all its grandeur, 
there was much pettiness about the Court at Versailles ; 
it stooped to deceits, tricks, lies, and let itself be a 
party to quarrels that should have been beneath it; 

* Watson, " The Story of France." 
259 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

yet it was hardly as low as the rival affair — the pseudo- 
court at Palais Royal. ^^ 

But Louis was as yet unthroned. On the 27th of 
June, at his behest, the three orders were fused. Louis 
thus traversed himself and compromised the crown. 
Not only was the court angered, it was frightened. Mob 
news added to this fright. Paris was letting loose its 
worst as well as its best. Men in rags, pinched, with 
livid faces, began to range the streets. *' The markets 
were battlefields." Bread was black, sour, unsatisfy- 
ing. Meantime some forty thousand troops were 
within reach of Paris. They were, in the main, Swiss 
and German mercenaries. 

Marshal Broglie, " that Hercules and Achilles of 
the old monarchy," had been called to command them. 
The Queen had sent for Breteuil, her confidential man, 
the ex-Ambassador at Vienna, a valiant penman, but 
who, for noise and bravado was equal to any swords- 
man. " His big manly voice sounded like energy ; he 
used to step heavily and stamp with his foot, as if he 
could conjure an army outl of the earth." ^^ A salvo 
of cannon, a discharge of musketry, and, whiff! away 
they would run — mobs and mobocrats, starvelings and 
statesmen. Our " Bardolph," the Baron de Breteuil, 
added : " If we must burn Paris, we must burn Paris." 
So there! De Broglie, by and by, betook him to the 
provinces to drum up a bigger army. He found it 
dangerous work and drew off. But the sight of sol- 
diers at Versailles displeased the deputies. Mirabeau 
made a motion on July 8, that the King be advised to 
order his bayonets elsewhere. When the time had 

*" According to Michelet (" French Revolution ") : "Arthur 
Young, the English traveler, much quoted by writers on the 
French Revolution, was dining with Egalite and other deputies ; 
and was shocked at seeing him laughing in his sleeve at this 
threatening time." 

" Madame de Stael. 

260 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

come for the motion to be referred to a committee, 
La Fayette arose, saying: 

" There are but two motives for referring a proposi- 
tion to a committee — when there are doubts as to the 
facts in a case, or on the determination which should 
be taken. But, gentlemen, the presence of the troops 
about the Assembly is a fact evident to each one of us. 
As to the determination to be taken in such a case, I will 
not insult the Assembly by believing that anyone of us 
can hesitate. I, therefore, shall not confine myself to 
supporting the motion of Mirabeau; I ask, instead of 
the reference ordered by the president, that the chamber 
take an immediate vote." 

The vote was taken; the message was sent; the 
request was refused. On the loth of July the Comte 
d'Artois shook his fist in Necker's face, saying : '* Go 
where you came from, traitorous foreigner ! Return to 
your little city lest you perish by my hand." Necker 
ignored him. He ignored the insinuation of Marie 
Antoinette that the Dauphin's death was God's pun- 
ishment of the King because he had depended upon a 
man out of the pale. Louis made believe he was dead 
with sleep. He sat with his eyes shut. Necker, for 
his part, thought the King fairly under his control. 
They had been conferring, and seemingly were in 
accord as to the next step, when mysterious word came 
from the Queen ; in another minute, Louis was lost to 
him. Necker received his dismissal, in the evening, 
Saturday, July ii, as he sat at his table. After dinner 
he invited his wife " to take a turn with him " in their 
carriage. They did not quit it until they had reached 
Brussels. *' If they dismiss you," La Fayette had said 
to him, " thirty thousand Parisians will conduct you 
back to Versailles." 

Next day was that explosive Sunday which saw 
the beginning of the great Bastille storm. It was most 
violent at the Palais Royal. The Duke of Orleans, 

261 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

says Louis Blanc, had " constructed in the middle of 
the Palais Royal garden an enclosure clothed with a 
trellis and which a terrace with flowers and jets of 
water crowned." 

" The apartments of the Prince were reached from 
it by a small open gallery and the lower apartments of 
the palace by a subterranean gallery. This enclosure, 
which from a distance resembled a large basin adorned 
with flowers, had been first intended as a theatre for 
exercises in horsemanship and had received the name of 
the circus. This strange forum became so formidable 
to the enemies of the Revolution that one of them 
painted it in these terms. ' It is the image of the 
chimera, and has the head of a beautiful prostitute, 
the tongue of a serpent, the hands of a harpy, its eyes 
emit flames, its heart is empty with lascivious thoughts, 
its mouth distils now venom, now heroic words.' 
Thither, then, went all Paris of the Revolution of the 
1 2th of July. The crowd was so great that many were 
obliged to climb into the branches of the trees and 
remain suspended there. They as yet only waited; 
but that groaning of restless multitudes, so resembling 
the sea, was already rising to heaven." 

It was the day of days for Camille Desmoulins,^^ 
and it was now high noon. With the tocsin sounding 
an alarm, cannon firing, excited crowds assembling, 
this young man felt his blood on fire. It came into 
his head to make capital of the Necker news — to pro- 
claim " a Saint Bartholomew of patriots." He ran 
forth from the Cafe de Foix, in the Palais Royal, 
leaped upon a table, drew weapons, flourished them, 
and cried as cries the leader of a host of men charging 
the foe : " To arms ! To arms ! " Around him came 
crowding all who were within earshot. They, too, 

" Michelet called Camille " a blackguard of genius " ; 
Sainte-Beuve amends the phrase to " a backguard of verve and 
talent," He was the sham-fifer of the Revolution, " who 
made merry till the day when he learned to his own cost that 
we cannot, with impunity, play with the tiger." 

262 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

shouted. " To arms ! " he repeated ; " the Germans in 
the Champ de Mars will enter Paris to-night to butcher 
the inhabitants. Let us hoist a cockade ! " He reached 
up, plucked a leaf from a tree and tucked it in his hat. 
Thousands imitated him ; ^^ and the shamrock hue 
would have been that of the French Revolution had 
some not recalled that green was the color of the 
odious Comte d'Artois. Gun-shops were raided. The 
cry of Desmoulins, like his cockade, was changed. It 
became "Arms and bread!" All that day, the fer- 
ment continued. Versailles, itself inactive, watched 
Paris, which was only protected from pillage within 
and attack without by the speedy organization of 
48,000 men into a Citizen Guard. Terror and feverish 
preparation was transmuted overnight into the very 
opposite. At dawn of the 14th, Paris caught up the 
cry, "A la Bastille ! " All at once this formidable 
prison stood out, in the inflamed imagination of the 
people, as the beast that they must destroy. It typi- 
fied despotism — this living tomb of old Latude. The 
rioters sacked the Hotel des Invalides ; and, now well 
armed, seized the prison. Its governor, De Launey, 
suffered death. Never had a mob delivered such a 
stroke of genius as was struck that day.^"^ The Duke 
de Liancourt was privileged to enter the King's bed- 
chamber and it was he who bore the news to Louis 
on his couch, with daylight creeping through the cur- 
tains. " What then," came sleepily from the pillow, 
" is it a revolt ? " 

" Sire," said the Duke, *' it is a revolution." All 

^^ " The crowd is immense in the Palais Royal. The 
barriers on the north have been sacked ; that of the throne is 
on fire. Everyone is taking the green cockade. ... It is said 
that the prisons are to be opened." — Commandant of Paris, 
by courier to Assembly at Versailles. 

" " How much the greatest event it is that ever happened 
in the world ! And how much the best !" — Charles James Fox 
(on the taking of the Bastille) to Fitzpatrick, July 30, 1789. 

263 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the world, especially the despotic European world, 
caught its breath at the taking of the Bastille. In 
truth its actual importance was magnified a thousand- 
fold. It was said everywhere : " France has destroyed 
the Bastille. It is through with despots. Great are 
the French." Or : " France has destroyed author- 
ity. It will destroy us. Terrible are the French — 
wicked, terrible ! '* 

But next day, and for quite a while thereafter, Paris 
was really more emotional than downright wicked. 
As Louis had promised to send the Swiss away, the 
people forgave him, and wanted him to come to Paris. 
It was a patched-up peace, " a hollow truce," perhaps ; 
nevertheless, there was an emotional reaction. It was 
" hollow " because the treacherous court ordered 
Berthier, the intendant, and Foulon, his father-in- 
law, under-minister of war, to arrange secretly for an 
attack upon the city. So much for Versailles ; nor was 
Paris sure of its own amiable intentions. 

La Fayette, meantime, had been chosen vice-presi- 
dent of the Assembly. That was on the 13th; on the 
15th he, with Bailly, Lally Tollendal, and Abbe Sieyes, 
headed a deputation of eighty-eight members on a 
placatory visit to Paris. ^^ They " were preceded by the 
French Guards, the Swiss, officers of the newly- 
organized militia and deputies of the Paris electors. 
They marched up the Rue St. Honore to the sound 

^® Baron Thiebault (1769-1846), Lieutenant-General in the 
French Army, then in command of a detachment, says in his 
Memoirs that at i or 2 a.m. he was at the Barriere des Bon- 
hommes in the Versailles road when his pickets stopped some 
horsemen followed by two or three carriages. " Of the four 
persons who were in the first, three got out ; they were MM. 
Bailly, de La Fayette and de Lally Tollendal." The latter, as 
spokesman, said that he was the bearer of a letter from the 
President of the Assembly to the President of the City Coun- 
cil to inform him that the King was coming that day to 
the Hotel de Ville. The incident makes "a flashlight" that 
reveals much. 

264 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of trumpets." It was a triumphal procession. Miche- 
let tells us that " every arm was stretched towards 
them, and every heart leaped with joy. The National 
Assembly and the people of Paris, the oath of the 
Jeu-de-Paume and the taking of the Bastille, victory 
and victory, kissed each other." Constantly now La 
Fayette is growing in popularity. From this time 
on until he is burnt in effigy in the garden of the 
Palais Royal we may well think of him as a favorite. 
He would make enemies and would have detractors,^*^ 
but the populace would applaud his good deeds and 
would condone others' they could not quite commend. 
" On their arrival at the Hotel de Ville, La Fayette, 
Bailly, the Archbishop of Paris, Sieyes and Clermont 
Tonnerre were made to sit at the bureau. La Fayette 
spoke coolly and prudently; next, Lally Tollendal, 
with his Irish impetuosity and easy tears. It was at 
the same Greve that Lally's father ^^ thirty years before 
had been gagged and beheaded by the ancien regime; 
his speech, full of emotion, was nothing but a sort of 
amnesty for the ancien regime.'' This " fattest of 
tender-hearted men " Lally, was crowned with flowers ; 
Bailly was similarly crowned. Then Bailly was elected 
Mayor and was acclaimed by the multitude. But who 
was to be commandant of the National Guard ? Moreau 
de Saint Mery, who had campaigned in America, was 

^® General Thiebault tells of "a very curious man who 
during that year (1789) used to come to the swimming school. 
He used to come with his hat on, his coat buttoned over his 
chest, booted and gloved, with a cane in his hand." Thus clad 
he would let himself fall into the water and swim about with 
his hat on his head and his cane in his mouth. He was getting 
ready against the day when he should be shipwrecked. This 
quaint person, whose name was M. Torneau, boasted of being 
what was then called an aristocrat. He cordially detested 
M. de La Fayette and one day maintained to the Duke of 
Chartres that that General had no talent. Further, he asserted 
that the best commandant for Paris would always be the man 
who best knew the streets — a cab driver. 

" See " Memoirs of Count Lally Tollendal," London, 1766. 
265 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

president of the municipal electors. At the right 
moment, he pointed to a bust of La Fayette in the 
great hall of Saint Jean. The bust had been presented 
by the State of Virginia to the City of Paris five years 
before. The gesture was enough. La Fayette was 
acclaimed as the head of the citizen militia. A cock- 
ade was chosen by La Fayette himself — red, blue and 
white ; and he vowed that ** it would go round the 
world." It is the tricolor now known in the remotest 
regions of the globe. This surely was a fruitful day 
for the Constitutionalists; and so was the 17th, when 
the King, melancholy, pale, entered Paris. The crowds 
were immense ; the sun was hot ; Louis was corpulent. 
" In front of the carriage rode La Fayette, the com- 
mandant, in a private dress, sword in hand, with the 
cockade and plume on his hat." Everything was obedi- 
ent to his slightest gesture. There was complete order ; 
not one cry of Vive le Roi, Now and then they cried 
'' Vive le Nation." There were 200,000 men under 
arms. Two men only were applauded, Bailly and 
La Fayette. A gun went off. A woman was killed. 
" There was no bad intention toward the King. Every- 
body was royalist, both the Assembly and people: 
Even Marat was until 1791." At the Hotel de Ville 
the King alighted. Bailly handed him a new cockade. 
The King put it in his hat. He passed up the stairs 
under swords placed crosswise, forming a canopy of 
steel. He was serious and silent. He said little except : 
" You may always rely upon my affections." What 
the King had undergone was enough to humiliate him 
deeply. But Louis was a strange compound. His 
tragedy had no hero till the simultaneous fall of the 
axe and the curtain; then pitying mortals began to 
martyrize him. But his contemporaries make him out 
coarse-grained and cruel. Thiebault tells of the way 
he turned upon a little dog at his heels and with his 

266 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

cane wantonly broke the creature's back, laughing the 
while. Now he returned to Versailles. Those who 
had been most persistent in urging him to oppose 
the commons were no longer there. They had been 
" sentenced " by the mob at the Palais Royal, 
which had hit upon a new way to terrorize the 
proscribed aristocrats. 

Accordingly the black-listed nobles had taken acute 
alarm and fled from France. Chief among them was 
the Comte d'Artois " who all his lifelong would do 
anything under the influence of fear till he might be 
called a very daredevil of cowardice." " He was 
bolting," says Thiebault, " as hard as his legs would 
carry him." 

From this time forth ''Exeunt Omnes" was the cue 
at Versailles. In pairs, in parties, the court now began 
to lose its Condes, Contis, Polignacs, Vaudeuils, its 
lords and lordlings — its dukes, its counts, its hangers-on 
of all degrees. With them went the women and their 
charges. Flight became the fashion under cover of 
darkness. It was the emigration. 

And whither the lords and ladies led, many rich 
Parisians followed. " Six thousand passports," says 
a documentary delver, " were issued in Paris in five 
days." The gay and immoral and flaunting element 
such as was wont to appear upon the Longchamps ave- 
nue, behind silver shod horses, in equipages too bizarre 
to be tolerated, even in a city usually indifferent to 
extravagance and licentiousness, took itself off to 
safer centres of display. Discharged servants were 
left homeless. Travellers no longer brought spare 
money to town ; and so the shopkeepers twiddled their 
thumbs as they talked trouble into an air already sur- 
charged with revolution. With the spendthrifts gone, 
nobody was spending. 

Not only was Paris a centrifugal, but a centripetal, 
267 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

point. Since the great hailstorm vagabonds had been 
coming in. " All hover around Paris and are there 
engulfed as in a sewer, the unfortunate along with the 
criminals." In April, toll-house clerks made note of 
the entrance of " a frightful number of poorly clad men 
of sinister aspect." In May, foreigners entered as to 
a coming fete — charlatans, rogues, " minions of the 
moon." *' The starving, the ruffians, the patriots all 
form one body." Toss an object from a balcony, 
declares Taine, and it would not reach the ground, 
" for the moving floor of heads ; " and many of these 
heads were " inflated with speculative ideas the most 
excitable and most excited." Taine had in mind the 
crowds such as Camille Desmoulins harangued. *' Now 
that the animal is entrapped," said he, speaking in the 
vein of the Twentieth Century anarchist, *' let him be 
knocked on the head. Never will the victors have a 
richer prey. Forty thousand palaces, mansions, 
chateaux, two-fifths of the property of France, will 
be the recompense of valor." Thus the incendiary, 
blind as to his own future as well as that of France. 
" There were sixty republics in Paris." " The real 
sovereign was the mob." 

Strangers, strange creatures, appeared in the streets 
like apparitions. No one knew who they were or 
where they were from. It was if they had come up 
out of some huge rat-hole extending to the remote parts 
of France. Or as if they had come down out of the 
midnight clouds. Fierce fellows some of them were; 
seemingly they were not far removed from those olden 
Franks who brandished hatchets and clubs and wore 
great mustaches like pendent lengths of rope. That 
summer many chateaux were burnt or sacked. Outlaws 
plundered in the name of authority. It was Nemesis. 
These wicked ones of Paris were the product of mis- 
rule throughout France. Really, one should say, 

268 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

throughout Europe. To escape unbearable hardships 
in the provinces, many of them had followed the roads 
that led to the capital ; and not the least of the roads 
was the road of crime. 

La Fayette was never busier than at this time. As 
he escorted the King to his carriage, after the enforced 
" fraternization " at the Hotel de Ville, Louis had said 
to him: " M. de La Fayette, I was looking for you to 
let you know that I confirm your nomination to the 
place of commander of the National Guard." La 
Fayette, nevertheless, demanded that his acts be sanc- 
tioned by the people " from whom should emanate all 
power." He was elected Commandant. Thereafter he 
felt himself a responsible executive. Many of the old 
Gardes Francaises entered the new^ Garde Bourgeoise; 
or, as La Fayette named the new militia, the National 
Guards. These he organized, clothed and armed. In 
their bearskin caps, the alert and well-drilled soldiers 
soon reflected honor upon their organizer. It is said 
that Bailly could only obtain *' a breathing spell " on 
rainy days. Certainly this was the case with La Fay- 
ette. Interruptions were frequent. Abbe Cordier was 
about to be hanged; when, of a sudden, La Fayette 
appeared before the mob. As luck would have it, just 
then the tutor of his son George Washington La Fay- 
ette entered the Hotel de Ville with the boy. La Fayette 
lifted the lad so that the sea of men could behold him, 
and shouted : " Gentlemen, I have the honor of present- 
ing to you my son." There was a responsive roar ; and, 
thus dramatically. Abbe Cordier's life was saved. But 
it was not all lif e-or-death thrill with the Commandant ; 
there was downright work for him. Gouverneur 
Morris gives some pertinent passage in his diary : 

'' July 20: Go to the Hotel de Ville, and with much 
difficulty find out the Marquis de La Fayette, who is 
exhausted by a variety of attentions. Tell him I 

269 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

will send his letters to America, and that he must give 
me a passport to visit the Bastille. Agree to dine with 
him, on condition that I may bring my own wine. 
Return home, write, and about four go to the Hotel 
de La Fayette. Find there Madame, the Due de la 
Rochefoucauld, and others. Dine. He gives me my 
passport. Suggest my plan regarding the Gardes Fran- 
gaises, which he likes. Advise him to have a complete 
plan for the militia prepared, and to submit it to the 
committee. Ask him if he can think of any steps 
which may be taken to induce the King to confer on 
him the government of the Isle de France. He tells 
me that he would prefer that of Paris simply; that 
he has the utmost power his heart could wish, and is 
grown tired of it ; that he has commanded absolutely a 
hundred thousand men, has marched his sovereign 
about the street as he pleased, prescribed the degree of 
applause which he should receive, and could have 
detained him prisoner had he thought proper. He 
wishes, therefore, as soon as possible to return to 
private life. 

One detects in this something of over-emphasis as 
to self on La Fayette's part. Even unboastful men, 
under long-continued strain (as witness our young 
organizer of the Army of the Potomac, if he may 
set off against the organizer of a great bourgeoise army 
of Paris), sometimes talk too warmly of themselves. 
Cold type is cold, indeed; especially Gouverneur 
Morris' : it no doubt chills the original thought which 
may really have been expressed with such modest 
reservations as to excuse it and make the most natural 
utterance in the world. 

There are many documents and narratives, that tell 
authoritatively of these days when "" Vive Bailly ! " 
"Vive La Fayette I" were heard throughout Paris. 
Few of the historians fail to comment upon La Fay- 
ette's extraordinary situation. For example, Miche- 
let : " A mayor and commandant of Paris appointed 
by electors without the King's consent, those places 

270 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

accepted by men of such importance as Bailly and La 
Fayette, and their nominations confirmed by the Assem- 
bly without asking the King for any permission, was 
no longer an insurrection, but a well and duly organized 
Revolution." Then, too, Carlyle, throwing himself 
into the Homeric swing : 

Above all there is La Fayette; whose name shall 
be Cromwell-Grandison and fill the world. Many a 
" formula " has this La Fayette, too, made away with ; 
yet not all formulas. He sticks by the Washington 
formula and by that he will stick — and hang by it, 
as by sure Bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight 
warship, which after all changes of wildest weather 
and water is still found hanging. Happy for him, be 
it glorious or not. x\lone of all Frenchmen he has a 
theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto ; 
he can become a hero and perfect character were it but 
the hero of a single idea. 

Numerous are the passages of this sort; but it is 
better that those given should suffice — that we should 
move on with the ever-accelerating current of events. 

A sore trial to Bailly and La Fayette was the mob- 
murder of Foulon and Berthier. These were the men 
— Foulon, aged 74, temporarily in Necker's shoes, and 
his son-in-law, intendant of Paris — who had tried to 
put the city under yoke by means of the mercenaries; 
but who had fled when Louis gave in. 

Foulon was especially odious since he had said: 
" If they are hungry, let them browse grass. Wait until 
I am minister, I will make them eat hay; my horses 
eat it." His very name was unfortunate — Foulons, 
** let us trample." His defenders speak of him as one 
of the largest employers of otherwise idle men. That 
is the apology offered for a hard plucker of the people. 
As a ruse, at this crisis of his fate, he simulated death 
and underwent a bogus funeral to avoid a real one. 
He was apprehended at Viry and borne into Paris under 

271 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

guard. With a necklace of nettles, a bouquet of thistles 
in his hand and a bottle of hay on his back, the money- 
loving Foulon who had threatened to " mow France " 
might have passed for a clown in a bucolic extrava- 
ganza but that all knew the tragic import of his seizure. 
He was dragged to the Hotel de Ville. The date was 
July 22. La Fayette was quick to see his own duty 
in the case. In a letter ^^ dated July i6, he said: " I 
have already saved the lives of six persons they were 
hanging in different quarters." "From the 14th to the 
22d of July," says Taine, " La Fayette at the risk of 
his life, saves with his own hand seventeen persons." 
Let us mark that : " At the risk of his life." He now 
thrice begged that " the judgment be regularly ren- 
dered " against Foulon, as well as Berthier ; and that 
the accused be sent to the Abbaye. Let us hear Miche- 
let, who, reminding us that the " illegal power " vested 
in Bailly and La Fayette " was now about to find itself 
in face of a terrible necessity," adds : 

" La Greve was full of men, strangers to the people, 
of a decent exterior, and some very well dressed. . . . 
Bailly expounded the principles and made some impres- 
sion oft those who were within hearing. The others 
shouted * Hang ' Hang him ! ' Bailly prudently with- 
drew and shut himself up in the Bureau des Subsist- 
ances. The guard was strong, said he, but M. de La 
Fayette, who relied on his ascendancy, had the impru- 
dence to lessen it. The crowd was in a terrible fever 
of uneasiness lest Foulon escape. He was shown to 
them at a window ; nevertheless they broke open the 
doors ; it became necessary to place him in a chair in 
front of the Bureau, in the great hall of Saint-Jean. 
There they began to preach to the crowd again, to 

* expound the principles ' that he must be judged. 

* Judged instantly and hung ! ' cried the crowd. So 
saying, they appointed judges, among others two cures, 
who refused. ' Make room there for M. de La Fay- 

^ " M. de La Fayette, Memoirs," iii, 264. 
272 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

ette ! ' He arrives, speaks in his turn, avows that 
Foulon is a villain, but says it is necessary to discover 
his accomplices. ' Let him be conducted to the 
Abbaye.' The front ranks, who heard him, consented ; 
not so the others. ' You are joking,' exclaimed a well- 
dressed man; * does it require time to judge a man 
who has been judged these thirty years? ' At the same 
time a shout is heard, and a new crowd rushes in; 
some say : * It is the faubourg,' others : ' It is the Palais 
Royal.' Foulon is carried off and dragged to the lamp 
opposite ; they made him demand pardon of the nation. 
They hoist him — the rope broke twice. They persisted, 
and go for a new one. At length, having hung him, 
they chopped his head off and carried it through Paris." 

Uplifted on the point of a pike, Foulon's head was 
thrust upon La Fayette's attention. The mob wished 
him to see it that he might learn to suppress himself in 
bloody emergencies. 

Berthier was ferocious when set upon. He fought ; 
received a hundred bayonet thrusts ; but, at last, lost his 
head, which was borne on a pike hither and yon ; and 
lost his heart, which a dragoon tore out in revenge for 
injuries inflicted upon a relative. And now mark the 
peculiar ethics of the mob : The dragoon had dishonored 
his company. His own comrades turned upon him. 
They killed him. 

In his short history of the French Revolution, 
R. M. Johnston says: 

" La Fayette is a personage easy to praise or to 
blame but not to estimate justly. At this moment [that 
of the establishment of the Bailly-La Fayette govern- 
ment] he enjoyed all the prestige of his brilliant con- 
nection with the cause of American independence ten 
years before, and of his constancy to the idea of liberty. 
His enemies, and they were many in the court circles, 
could detect easily enough the vanity that entered into 
his composition, but neither they nor his friends could 
recognize or appreciate in him that truest liberalism 
of all, which is toleration. La Fayette had already 
learned the lesson it took France a century to learn, 
i8 273 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

that liberty implies freedom of opinion for others, and 
that reasonable compromise is the true basis of con- 
structive politics. When he later appeared to swerve 
or contradict himself, it was often because he felt the 
scruples of a true devotee of liberty, against imposing a 
policy. For the moment he had become a popular 
idol, the generous, brave, high-minded young knight, 
the champion of the popular cause." 

We now have come upon bloody times, if not upon 
the prologue to the Terror itself. Indeed many regard 
the Bastille day as the beginning of the fearsome era. 
"Pour tout homme impartial la Terreur date dii 14 
juillct," says Malouet in his " Memoires " (t. ii, p. 9). 
In honor bound, La Fayette felt that since he had been 
compromised he must resign his municipal office. He 
had withstood clamor with conscientious regard for 
right and humanity; he deliberately had taken the 
unpopular as against the popular course ; he had done 
all that could have been done by mortal man ; and now ! 
— well, now he would step down. He offered his resig- 
nation as commandant, but it was not accepted. His 
critics say that it was only his pride that was hurt. 
Maybe so; yet a man who risked his life every day, 
as La Fayette was doing, could have had little time to 
resent mere rebuffs. Without defending La Fayette, 
it is yet incumbent upon us to keep on the safe side 
of the chalk-mark. We must not abuse him, either. 
It is much more likely that La Fayette, bred as a sol- 
dier, knew how necessary it was that he should exact 
obedience or give place to someone who could. Mutin- 
ous soldiers lead their general a sad life; mutinous 
sailors are the dread of the sea; here in Paris was a 
mob-situation infinitely worse than mutiny. " Liberty 
is now the general cry," wrote Gouverneur Morris to 
General Washington (July 19) ; " authority is a name 
and no longer a reality." " In short," says Taine, 
*' the condition was not merely political — it was social." 

274 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

** We are poor, you are rich ; we mean to have your 
property ! " announced the peasant. It was a Jacquerie. 
There was a cockade in every cap. " The Revolution 
was carried with prodigious suddenness from city to 
village, from village to farm-houses." Armed bands 
filled the roads. Yet, when Necker came out of exile, 
those same roads were strewn with flowers. The cry 
was ** Vive Necker, Father of the People ! " His 
renewed popularity lasted but a day. His Paris wel- 
come was so warm as to almost cause a " vertigo of 
pride " ; a few hours later he lost his slippery hold — 
a patient and persistent man ; a man of heart ; yet unable 
to stand up in the whirl of factions. New characters 
appeared. We begin to hear of Marat ; Robespierre's 
name is getting into print — Robert Pierre, as .the 
papers at first had it — and we find that the word 
" anarchy " is more and more used as descriptive of 
conditions. Here is a sentence from another of Gouver- 
neur Morris' letters (July 31) : "This country now is 
as near in a state of anarchy as it is possible for a 
country to be without breaking up." In La Fayette's 
Auvergne, " people fled to the woods." "All control- 
ling power is slackened," said Necker, " everything is 
a prey to the passions of individuals." " Spontaneous 
anarchy " is another expression often met with in let- 
ters and addresses. And now we come to the night 
of the 4th of August — an epoch in the history of man- 
kind — when " the feudal regime was destroyed and the 
reign of equality began." It was La Fayette's brother- 
in-law, the Vicomte de Noailles,^'* who precipitated 
feudal abolition in the National Assembly. At eight 
o'clock on a Tuesday evening, Mirabeau absent, this 

"Louis, Vicomte de Noailles (1754-1804), was with 
Rochambeau and La Fayette in America. " It was he," says 
Crawford, in " Mme. de La Fayette," " who concluded the 
details of the final capitulation of Yorktown." He served in 
the West Indies. He was elected to the States-General. With 

275 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

young noble, who had turned democrat, suddenly gal- 
vanized the deputies. It was a clear case of thunder- 
stealing on his part. As spokesman of the Breton 
club (later the Jacobin Club) the Due d'Aiguillon, 
young nephew of Richelieu, " the richest seigneur in 
feudal properties after the King," was about to pro- 
pose that all peasants should purchase exemption from 
feudal duties. De Noailles, going a long ways beyond 
him in liberality, moved that the Assembly establish 
" equality in taxation " ; and that it provide for " the 
destruction of the privileges which crush the people; 
the abolition of the feudal rights, on the payment of 
a redemption, and the abolition without redemption of 
seignorial corvees, mortmains and all personal servi- 
tude." At once there was a tremendous excitement. 
Speech followed speech. Privilege after privilege was 
renounced; that of holding office by purchase, rights 
of jurisdiction, municipal privileges, tithes. One man 
was to be as good as another. In their intoxication, 
carried away with joy, the emulous deputies went far 
beyond the programme of the Vicomte de Noailles. 
There was an outgush of pent-up liberalism. France 
at once became free. A solemn hour this (says Miche- 
let) *' in which feudality, after a reign of a thousand 
years, abdicates, abjures, and condemns itself." '* The 
France of history," says Lord Acton, " vanished on 
August 4th, and the France of the new democracy 
took its place. The transfer of property from the 
upper class to the lower was considerable. The 
peasants' income was increased about 60 per cent. 
Nobody objected to the tremendous loss, or argued 
to diminish it." 

the Due d'Aiguillon he proposed the abolition of titles. He 
emigrated to America, and was a partner in Bingham's Bank. 
Philadelphia. He had adventures in the West Indies and died 
there of wounds, January 9, 1803. His heart was enclosed 
in a silver casket and carried to France. He was Mme. de 
La Fayette's cousin, and the husband of her sister Louise. 

276 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Yet Necker and many another wanted it to be put 
into the new Constitution that the King should have a 
veto. Abbe Sieyes " defined the veto as a simple lettre 
de cachet flung by one individual against the general 
will." Paris was up in arms against the veto — and 
against Mirabeau, too, since he favored it. 

The Marquis de Saint Huruge, a Hercules, a 
stentor, gave La Fayette trouble on account of the veto. 
This violent man led a Palais Royal mob toward Ver- 
sailles, when some guardsmen sent by La Fayette inter- 
cepted and dispersed the marchers and cast the leader 
into prison. Bailly and La Fayette found it necessary 
to be constantly alert. They were " obliged to be cun- 
ning, to implore, to throw themselves between " the 
mob and its victims. La Fayette believed that as soon 
as the Constitution was completed and accepted better 
times would come. He also thought that France needed 
what he was trying to give to Paris — an adequate 
army of guardsmen. *' The National Guard," says 
Lord Acton,-^ " was an invention of a great use, for it 
was the army of society distinct from the army of the 
State, opinion in arms apart from authority. It was 
the middle class organized as a force, against tlie force 
above and the force below; and it protected liberty 
against the crown and property against the poor. It 
has been ever since the defense of order and the ruin 
of governments ; for, as it was the nation itself, nobody 
was bold enough to fight it. Before the altar of Notre 
Dame La Fayette took the oath of fidelity to the people, 
and not to the King. He never displayed real capacity 
for peace or war; but in the changes of a long life 
he was true to the early convictions imbibed in Wash- 
ington's camp." 

Meantime Mounier was losing ground in the Assem- 

^ " Lectures on the French Revolution," by John E. E. 
Dalberg-Acton, p. 88. 

277 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

bly. *' He was supported by La Fayette, who dreaded 
as much as he did the extinction of the royal power. 
. . . Even Siieyes was wiUing to have two houses. 
The debates ran from August 27 to October i. The 
single chamber was adopted. The English model was 
thrown out; and thus Mounier and La Fayette were 
beaten. Sieyes triumphed on September 29, when his 
plan, abolishing the ancient provinces and dividing 
France into eighty departments, outside of Paris, was 
adopted. Each was to have an average of nine depu- 
ties. " By a parallel process, assemblies were formed 
for local administrations -^ on the principle that the 
right of exercising power proceeds from below and 
the actual exercise of power from above. This is 
mainly the measure which has made the France of 
to-day; and when it became a law in December, the 
chief part of the new Constitution was completed." 
But, in spite of the Constitution-makers, the woes of 
France were multiplying. Target of the Assembly, 
hearing of a plan to remedy the financial disorder, 
said : " If anybody has such a plan let him at once be 
smothered. It is the disorder of the finances that 
puts the King in our power." As for the King, when 
he overheard a noble regretting that affairs were going 
so badly, he took him aside and said : " Yes, things are 
going badly, and nothing can improve our position but 
excess of evil." 

Everything conspired to prevent a lasting settle- 
ment. " All through September, at Paris," says Lord 
Acton, " La Fayette at the head of the forces of order, 
and the forces of tumult controlled by the Palais Royal 
had watched each other waiting for a deadly fight. 
There were frequent threats of marching on Versailles, 
followed by reassuring messages from the general that 
he had appeased the storm. As it grew louder, he made 

*^ There were 40,000 communes! 
278 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

himself more and more the arbiter of the State. The 
government, resenting this protectorate, judged that the 
danger of an attack ought to be averted, not by the 
dubious fidelity and more dubious capacity of the 
commander of the National Guard but by the direct 
resources of the Crown. They summoned the Flanders 
regiment, which was reputed loyal, and marched in a 
thousand strong." ^" 

The truth is that Louis had been advised by " thirty- 
two of the principal royalists in the Assembly " to quit 
France ; the fetching up of the Flanders regiment was 
the alternative. It fired the very fuse it was meant to 
dampen. With hunger gnawing in Paris, the King's 
body-guard shamelessly gave a banquet in Versailles 
at which drunken officers of the Flanders regiment 
trampled upon the tricolor and kissed the white cockade 
of royalty. Imbert de Saint-Amand,-^ telling of this 
banquet of October i, says: 

" The King, who had been hunting in the Park of 
Meudon, suddenly made his appearance in the royal box 
with the Queen, his son and daughter. The band 
played the air from ' Richard Coeur de Lion ' : 

' Oh, Richard, oh my King ! the world abandons you ' : 

then the air from the * Deserter ' : 

* Can one pain what one loves ? ' 

The assembled throng began to cheer ; the men waved 
their hats, the women their handkerchiefs, with the 
wildest enthusiasm. The royal family left their box 
and walked through the hall. The Queen, who led 
her son by the hand, was glad to show him to the faith- 
ful servants, whose applause brought tears to her eyes. 
She remembered the Hungarians, who said to her 

^La Fayette was free to admit that he never could per- 
suade France to do the things he wished her. But he undertook 
much in her behalf and in a large way. Lord Acton's judg- 
ment seems harsh — but it is a fact that few Britons can rid 
themselves of prejudice against La Fayette. 

^ In " Marie Antoinette and the Old Regime." 
279 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

mother, Maria Teresa, ' Moriamur pro rege nostra.' 
Her face which was generally so sad was lit up with a 
ray of happiness. Like Homer's Andromache she 
smiled amid her tears. It was a grand festival, a great 
manifestation of chivalric honor. It is easy to imagine 
Marie Antoinette's feelings at finding friends when 
she thought herself abandoned. Misfortune makes the 
soul tender and open to impression ; the slightest marks 
of sympathy called forth lively gratitude. How often 
when she was living in the fiery furnace of the Revolu- 
tion the unhappy Queen must have recalled this last 
hour of happiness." 

This pen-picture brings us close to *' the Austrian " 
of the hostile multitude. We do not share her biogra- 
pher's sentimentality, but understand his viewpoint, 
which is antithetical to that of the bitter and unfor- 
giving sans-culotfe of her own day. We see her 
when Maria Teresa cried : " Take her ! " with some- 
what too much of the piping gladness of the mother- 
bird expelling her fledgling ; we see on the Rhine Island 
in that tent outrageously, if prophetically, decorated 
with scenes from the tragic nuptials of Medea; we 
hear her girl-sobs seeking sympathy in the cold bosom 
of " Madame Etiquette " ; behold her as the booby 
Dauphin shunned her bed on their wedding night; 
visualize the horrible stampede at the Paris fireworks 
fete in her honor ; and follow her through the succeed- 
ing years of triumphs, persecutions and scandals at 
Versailles and Le Petit Trianon. Whatever her own 
shortcomings, errors, sins, one is obliged to feel for her; 
she was to be overwhelmed and most terribly entombed 
by the^ downfall of the throne. 

Witty Mirabeau had said of Mari^ Antoinette that 
*' the only man the King had about him was the Queen." 
For some reason best known to herself, she hated La 
Fayette. This hatred was fatal to her, since he, in a 
later crisis, of all men, might have saved her. 

280 




MARIE ANTOINETTE. QUEEN OF FRANCE 
From the color-print by Janinet 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The present crisis was that of the Bread Riot. 

Hunger caused it ; but the banquet and the tramp- 
Hng of the tricolor had much to do with the march 
of the mob. 

It was on the 5th of October — a dark and rainy 
day. The marchers, led by Stanislas Maillard, " a 
sinister character," were mainly women. The women 
of Paris " in every riot were the most inveterate and 
furious." They " wandered around like lionesses." 
They " had no children " — such women. When they 
could find drink, they drank — many of them. Said 
one, a fury : " Austrian, you have danced for your 
own pleasure ; you shall dance for ours. I want your 
skin to make ribbons of, your blood in my inkstand; 
my apron for your entrails." These the fell ones who 
halted at the door of the Assembly at four o'clock, 
and sent a delegation to the King. Louis treated his 
visitors so kindly that one of them, Louise Chabry, 
flower-girl of the Palais Royal, fainted. The King 
kissed her. '* To the lantern with them ! " cried the 
furies when their delegates reported. Night came on. 
There was a high wind, with rain ; and it was distress- 
ingly sold. V^ersailles -"^ was overrun. In the hall 
of the National Assembly women in disarray, wet, wild- 
eyed, uproarious, embarrassed the Constitution-makers 
with kisses and cries of " bread." They were ail-too 
loving, ail-too ferocious, they would not takes them- 
selves ofif. 

But what of Paris all this time? What of the 
authorities at the Hotel de Ville, including General 
Lafayette? It is Carlyle ^^ who takes up the tale 
and tells it for us : 

^ " The command, at Versailles, was in the hands of 
d'Estaing, the Admiral of the American War, who at this 
critical moment showed no capacity." — Lord Acton. 

" " The French Revolution," by Thomas Carlyle, vol. i, 
page 212. 

281 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" Armed National Guards from every District, espe- 
cially the Grenadiers of the Centre, who are our old 
Gardes Francaises, arrive in quick sequence, on the 
Place de Greve. An ' immense people ' is there. . . . 
The Centre Grenadiers are received with cheering. 
The three hundred have assembled ; ' all the committees 
are in activity ; ' La Fayette is dictating dispatches for 
Versailles when a deputation of the Centre Grenadiers 
introduces itself to him. The Deputation makes a mili- 
tary obeisance ; and thus speaks, not without a kind 
of thought in it : Mon General, we are deputed by the 
Six Companies of Grenadiers. We do not think you 
a traitor, but we think the government betrays you; 
it is time that this end. We cannot turn our bayonets 
against women crying to us for bread. The people 
are miserable, the source of the mischief is at Versailles : 
we must go seek the King and bring him to Paris. We 
must exterminate (e.vterniiner) the Regiment de Flan- 
dre and the Gardes dit Corps who have dared to trample 
on the National Cockade. If the King be too weak 
to wear his crown, let him lay it down. You will crown 
his son, you will name a Council of Regency, and all 
will go better.-*^ 

" Reproachful astonishment paints itself on the face 
of La Fayette: speaks itself from his eloquent chival- 
rous lips : in vain ' My General, we would shed the last 
drop of our blood for you ; but the root of the mischief 
is at Versailles ; we must go and bring the King to 
Paris. All the people wish it (tout le peiiple le vent)' 

" My General descends to the outer staircase ; and 
harangues ;' once more in vain. ' To Versailles ! ' To 
Versailles ! Mayor Bailly, sent for through floods of 
sans-cidottisni, attempts academic oratoi*y from his gilt 
stage-coach ; realizes nothing but infinite hoarse cries 
of ' Bread ! ' 'To Versailles ! ' — and gladly shrinks 
within doors. La Fayette mounts the white charger; 
and again harangues and reharangues with eloquence ; 
with firmness ; indignant demonstration ; with all things 
but persuasion : 'To Versailles ! To Versailles !' So lasts 
it, hour after hour — for the space of a half a day. 

"The great Scipio-Americanus can do nothing; 
not so much as escape. ' Morhleii, mon general,' cry 

^ " Deux Amis," iii, i6i. 

282 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

the Grenadiers, surveying their ranks as the white 
charger makes a motion that way, * you will not leave 
us, you will abide with us.' A perilous juncture: 
Mayor Bailly and the Municipals sit quaking within 
doors ; my General is prisoner without : the Place de 
Greve with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole 
irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, is one 
minatory mass of clear or rusty steel, all hearts set with 
a moody fixedness on one object. Moody, fixed are all 
hearts ; tranquil is no heart — if it be not that of the 
white charger who paws there with arched neck, com- 
posedly champing his bit ; as if no World with 
its Dynasties and Eras were now rushing do\vn. 
The drizzly day bends westward ; the cry is still 
' To Versailles ! ' " 

Of the *' instructions " to La Fayette referred to, 
Lord Acton ^^ says : " They were brought to him where 
he sat in the saddle in the Place de Greve, and he read 
them with an expression of the utmost alarm. They 
contained all that ambition could desire, for the four 
points which he was directed to insist on made him 
Dictator of France." 

And now let us have a plain tale from a soldier, 
General Thiebault,-* one of La Fayette's officers in the 
National Guard: 

" Paris was full of spontaneously collected groups. 
In the midst of a general tumult some cries were dis- 
tinctly heard : The first was ' Bread ! ' The second, 
' Arms ! ' The third, ' To Versailles ! ' The fourth, 
' The King to Paris ! ' The cry ' Bread ! bread ! ' 
uttered by a young girl who was beating a drum which 
she had taken from some guardroom, was enough to 
cause her to be followed by an immense crowd, partly 
armed with axes and pikes, who pillaged all the bakers' 
shops which it found in its course. At the cry * To 
arms! ' it betook itself to the Hotel de Ville, where it 
forced its gates, rang the alarm bell, and got hold of 
I do not know how many thousand muskets. Then 
proclaiming that it was necessary to save the deputies, to 

^^ " Lectures on the French Revolution," p. 134. 
^'^ " Memoirs of Baron Thiebault," vol. i, pp. 78 et seq. 
283 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

prevent the King from being carried off, to bring him 
to Paris and keep him there, it marched in hideous 
bands upon Versailles. . . . If M. de La Fayette 
had chosen, the movement might have been anticipated 
and repressed, but the proper steps were not taken in 
time. . . . When the Hotel de Ville was attacked, 
La Fayette had only a fraction of a battalion besides 
the regular guard with which to defend it; the other 
battalions were not on the spot — fifty-nine out of sixty ; 
that is, remained in a state of tranquil inactivity. . . . 
It was not until nearly six o'clock that an aide-de-camp 
from M. de La Fayette arrived at the Feuillants ; we 
stood to our arms instantly, and our right half-battal- 
ion was despatched to Versailles, whereas 20,000 men 
should have been sent eight or ten hours before to 
occupy a wood of Meudon and the gates of Sevres and 
Saint-Cloud. . . . We advanced only by short 
stages, interrupted by long halts. It had begun to rain ; 
one downpour followed another, the wind was frightful 
and marching became even more laborious. It took us 
six hours to reach the drill-ground at Versailles, where 
we deployed a half an hour after midnight, and were 
ordered to bivouac." 

As many as four thousand spent this stormy night 
in Assembly Hall. Not that all were women ; but it was 
the women who made the noise, the confusion. One 
of them got into the president's chair and seized his 
bell. When Mounier entered, they badgered him. He 
talked of the Constitution. They sang a wild song of 
*' Bread ! " He thought to pacify them with the 
announcement that the King had just accepted the 
Constitution. Still they cried " Bread ! Bread ! " 
" Why did you defend the veto? Mind the lanterne ! " 

Bread was brought into the Hall. There was a 
clamorous feast. 

The deputies tried to discuss the subject on the 
calendar. A fishwoman, backed by a whole gallery- 
full of rioters, cried: -^ " Who is that speaking? Make 

^ Etienne Dumont, " Souvenirs," p. 181. 
284 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

that chatterbox hold his prating! That is not the 
question! Let them rather hear our darling little 
Mirabeau ! " Then all the women would shout : " Our 
darling mother Mirabeau ! " 

Mirabeau, for his part, was shy. He had tried to 
get out of the embarrassing affair. He had said: 
" Mounier, Paris is marching against us — believe me 
or not, forty thousand men are marching against us. 
Feign illness, go to the palace, give them notice ; there 
is not a moment to be lost." According to Michelet, 
Mounier thought Mirabeau was really back of the 
movement ; so answered, dryly : " Well, so much the 
better, we shall have a republic sooner." But Mira- 
beau had nothing to do with it. He had gone home 
and to bed, from which a deputy dragged him that he 
might return to the hall and still the clamor. '* Darling 
little Mirabeau " spoke hardly a word. It stormed 
without. It stormed within. 

La Fayette reached Versailles at midnight. As he 
approached the chateau, he " made his troops renew 
their oath of fidelity to the law and to the King." Then 
he sent word to Louis of their arrival. For the most 
part we here follow Michelet, who says that Louis 
welcomed him, adding that he had just accepted his 
[La Fayette's] Declaration of Rights : 

" La Fayette entered the chateau alone, to the aston- 
ishment of the guards and everybody else. In the oeil- 
de-bceuf, one of the courtiers was so foolish as to 
say : * There goes Cromwell.' To which La Fayette 
replied, very aptly : ' Sir, Cromwell would not have 
entered alone.' " 

Madame de Stael saw La Fayette enter. " He 
appeared very calm," said she ; " nobody ever saw him 
otherwise ; his modesty suffered from the importance of 
his position." " The stronger he appeared," adds 
Michelet, " the more respectful was his behavior. . . . 

285 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

The King entrusted to the National Guard the outer 
posts of the castle; the body-guards preserved those 
within. Even the outside was not entirely entrusted 
to La Fayette. On one of his patrols wishing to pass 
into the park, entrance was refused. The park was 
occupied by body-guards and other troops ; till two in 
the morning they awaited the King in case he should at 
last resolve to fly. At two o'clock only, having been 
pacified by La Fayette, they told them they might go 
to Rambouillet." 

The Assembly had dispersed at three. Many of 
the mob had started back for Paris. So La Fayette, 
having bestowed his guardsmen in dry quarters, went 
to the Hotel de Noailles. He was wet; he had been 
under strain since noon ; " he slept as a man sleeps 
after twenty hours' fatigue and agitation.'* 

These details are brought into our pages not only 
because they smack of flesh and blood reality and make 
vivid for us a critical night in La Fayette's life, but 
because they serve to clear his name of a slur and an 
aspersion. " He slept," say his critics, '* when to sleep 
was' a crime." ^^ 

But La Fayette did not sleep until all was in order— 
or seemingly so. Among the rioters were many rogues, 
robbers, cunning criminals shrewd enough to see that 
here was the chance of a lifetime to rob a palace in 
the name of patriotism. The pick of the ages was 
here — what w^as not here in the way of gems ; precious 
objects innumerable, any one of which would make a 
man's fortune ! There were prowling experts who 

^Mmbert de Saint-Amand, in "Marie Antoinette and the 
End of the Old Regime," dwells upon "the insufficiency of 
La Fayette's defensive measures " ; " his fatal confidence" ; 
" his blind optimism." " Without doubt La Fayette was no 
traitor, but he was absurdly optimistic ... he lay down in 
good faith." Saint-Amand thinks he should have watched 
" the furies who had sworn to cut off Marie Antoinette's neck 
on a milestone." 

286 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

could pick locks, climb towers, descend chimneys. In 
the night the Queen heard them in her own apartments. 
Doors were smashed ; windows broken in ; pistols fired. 
The Queen was in tears. " Save me ! Save my chil- 
dren ! " she cried. She ran to the King ; and, weeping, 
made him promise not to go away and leave her. There 
was much confusion — darkness and uproar without; 
terror within. Hoche forced his way to the King and 
Queen. At first, they thought his guardsmen had 
come to kill them ; but they were reassured. He was 
acting for La Fayette. Kind and firm was Hoche — 
a true man. 

One of La Fayette's soldiers had been killed; 
so after daybreak, his comrades seized one of the 
palace guards and were dragging him toward the 
body, in order to retaliate, when La Fayette came 
up. Again Michelet: 

** ' I have given my word to the King," cried La 
Fayette, ' to save his men. Cause my word to be 
respected.' The man was saved. Not so La Fayette. 
A furious fellow cried out: 'Kill him!' La Fayette 
gave orders to have him arrested, and the obedient 
crowd dragged him accordingly towards the general, 
dashing his head against the pavement. He then 
entered the castle. Madame Adelaide, the King's aunt, 
wxnt up to him and embraced him. * It is you,' cried 
she, ' who has saved us.' He ran to the King's cabinet. 
Who would believe that etiquette still subsisted? A 
grand officer stopped him for a moment, and then 
allowed him to pass : ' Sir,' said he, seriously, ' the 
King grants you les grandcs entrees/ 

*' The King showed himself at the balcony, and 
was welcomed with the unanimous shout which was 
taken up by the people of ' God Save the King ! ' * Vive 
le Roi ! ' 

The King at Paris ! ' was the second shout, which 
was taken up by the people and repeated by the 
whole army. 

" The Queen was standing near a window with her 
287 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

daughter beside her and the Dauphin before her. The 
child playing with his sister's hair, cried : ' Mamma, I 
am hungry ! ' 

" At that moment several voices raised a formidable 
shout : ' The Queen ! ' The people wanted to see her 
on the balcony. She hesitated. ' What,' said she, * all 
alone ? ' ' Madam, be not afraid,' said La Fayette. She 
went, but not alone, holding an admirable safeguard — 
in one hand her daughter, the other her son. The court 
of marble was terrible, in awful commotion, like the 
sea in its fury; the National Guards, lining every side, 
could not answer for the centre — there were firearms, 
and men blind with rage. La Fayette's conduct was 
admirable; for that trembling woman, he risked his 
popularity, his destiny, his very life ; he appeared with 
her on the balcony and kissed her hand. . . . 

" The King was trembling with fear when the 
Queen went to the balcony. The step having suc- 
ceeded : * My guards ? ' said he to La Fayette, * could 
you also do something for them ? ' ' Give me one ? ' 
La Fayette led him to, the balcony, told him to take 
the oath, and show the National Cockade in his hat. 
The guard kissed it, and the people shouted : ' Vivent 
les gardes du corps! ' " 

But Paris? The King held back. He sent for the 
Assembly. Many in that body did not wish him to go. 
The Duke of Orleans probably did not. " The very 
worst thing that could happen to the latter," says 
Michelet, " who was foolishly accused of wishing to 
kill the Queen, was that the Queen should have been 
killed; and that the King, freed from that living cause 
of unpopularity, should return to Paris and fall into 
the hands of such men as Bailly or La Fayette." 

But the Duke of Orleans, with blood still on the 
palace stairs, " went and showed himself to the people, 
with an enormous cockade in his hat, laughing and 
flourishing a switch in his hand." 

At last the King gave in to La Fayette. 

2%^ 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

" A hundred deputies surround the King — a whole 
army — a wliole people. He departs from the palace of 
Louis XIV, never to return. The whole rnultitude 
begins to move; they march off towards Paris, some 
before the King, some behind. Men and women all 
go as they can, on foot or on horseback, in coaches and 
carts, on cannon-carriages, or whatever they could find. 
They had the good fortune to meet with a convoy of 
flour — a blessing for the famished town. The women 
carried large loaves on pikes ; others, branches of poplar 
already tinted with autumn. ... * We are bring- 
ing back the baker, his wife and the little shop 
boy . . .' The whole spectacle was at once gay, 
melancholy, joyous and gloomy. . . , The rain fell 
in torrents; they marched but slowly, and in muddy 
roads. Now and then several fired off ^ms by way of 
rejoicing, or to discharge their arms. The royal car- 
riage, surrounded by an escort, and with La Fayette at 
the door, moved like a hearse. . . . When the King 
and Queen appeared by torch-light at the Hotel de 
Ville, a roar like thunder arose from La Greve. 

" * The Revolution is ended,' cried the crowd. 
' Here is the King delivered from the Palace at Ver- 
sailles, from his courtiers and advisers. . . . Live 
among us, O King, and be at length free ! ' " 

It was a bitter experience for La Fayette — humiliat- 
ing, in that he was driven to do so unhandsome a thing 
as to take possession of the royal pair ; poignant, con- 
sidering the distresses involved and, finally, all the 
harder because the whole proceeding went against 
his judgment. But in a sense he profited by the inci- 
dent. He gained in popularity and power. There 
was an access of spirit, too ; for he " emboldened the 
municipality to prosecute Marat's sanguinary news- 
paper at the Chatelet (tribunal) ; and he went in per- 
son to the Duke of Orleans, intimidated him, spoke to 
him in strong and resolute terms both at his house and 
before the King, giving him to understand that after 
the 6th of October his presence at Paris was trouble- 
some, furnished pretexts and excluded tranquillity. 
19 289 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

By these means he induced him to go to London (nomi- 
nally on a diplomatic mission) ; but when the Duke 
wanted to return, La Fayette sent him word that, the 
day after his return, he would have to fight a duel with 
him." Thus " the first two men in France, La Fayette 
and Mirabeau, one the most popular and the other the 
most eloquent," were brought closer together. '' Mira- 
beau went over to the side of La Fayette. He frankly 
proposed to him to overthrow Necker, and to share 
the government between themselves. This was cer- 
tainly the only chance of safety that remained to the 
King. But La Fayette neither liked or esteemed Mira- 
beau; and the court detested both." 

Fortunately for France, the winter that now came 
on was mild and open. Bread could be had. The 
Assembly was busy bettering things. Paris looked for- 
ward to its celebration of the first anniversary of the 
Fall of the Bastille. But before that date there hap- 
pened on June 20 an interesting passage between 
M. Foucault and La Fayette. The proposition was to 
abolish all titles. 

" What would you do, if there were no titles," asked 
M. Foucault, " with the man whom Henry H created, 
according to the words of the patent, noble and count 
for having saved the state ? " 

" I would omit ' created count,' " replied La Fay- 
ette, " and insert only that he had saved the state." 

La Fayette bore off the honors at the Bastille event — 
the Feast of the Federation. This was a pacificatory 
affair, and but for rain would have been of extraordi- 
nary splendor. As it was, the sun of France remained 
ominously behind the clouds. In the Champ de Mars, 
with three hundred thousand people present, Louis on 
one throne and the president of the Assembly on 
another, high mass was celebrated by the Bishop of 
Antun (Talleyrand). Then La Fayette, having him- 

290 




"GUARDE NATIONAL ET FEDERE" 

LaFayette had much to do with developing "Le soldat-citoyen." The 

engraving (from "Les Francais sous la Revolution") was etched 

on steel by Massard from a design by H. Baron 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

self taken the oath of fideHty, administered it to the 
assembled federates. 

One hand was on his heart > the other uplifted. 
This was the oath he gave: 

" We swear to be always faithful to tlie nation, 
the law and the King ; to protect conformably with the 
laws, the security of person and property, the traffic in 
grains and other provisions in the interior of the King- 
dom, the collection of public taxes under whatever 
form they exist, and to remain united to all Frenchmen 
by the indissoluble ties of fraternity." 

A great cry arose: " Je le jure! — I swear it! " 
General Thiebault, in his " Memoirs," says : " The 
Federation cohort started from the place where the Bas- 
tille stood and w4iere not a trace of it remained, and, 
marching with its eighty-three banners outspread and 
100,000 strong, took more than three hours to get into 
movement. . . . The man who attracted the atten- 
tion of all beholders was M. de La Fayette; he had full 
charge of that solemnity, though he really was in com- 
mand only of the Federals ; he seemed to be command- 
ing the whole of France. I can see him now, mounted 
on his white horse, ^^ ranging over that vast space 
as if he were master of it. I may quote the witty 
remark of a friend, who said to me, pointing to him: 
* Do you see M. de La Fayette, galloping through 
the ages to come ? * " 

It so happened that Captain John Paul Jones, our 
American naval hero, was in this throng; and Horace 

^"^"This English horse, which had cost 1500 louis, sud- 
denly became so vicious that he passed from hand to hand 
until he became the property of a man from whom I hired 
horses. I rode him nearly all the summer of 1791, but he was 
not a pleasant mount. He had such a trick of shying that 
no one could stay near me, and foot-passengers got out of 
his way." — " Memoirs of Baron Thiebault." 

291 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Walpole must have been there, too, for on July 23, 
1790, he wrote to Miss Mary Berry: 

" The day of the jubilee was a deluge, and, like 
Noah's flood and the fetats almost swept away every- 
thing, it rained fourteen hours, and not a dry thread 
but on the Queen (who was there, and had an awning 
for her) and a few ladies behind the King. The rest 
you know — but now list! When Phillipe d'Orleans 
waited on the still King, M. Gouvion ^^ (second under 
La Fayette), jostled him and said: * If you do not 
resent this you are a scoundrel — ce nest pas tout' — five 
and twenty of the Garde National have bound them- 
selves to fight the aforesaid Phillipe, provided that like 
a bowl he can tip down Gouvion and the first four and 
twenty (the 27th is to be the octave of the 14th, and 
is expected to produce fearful events). On that day 
La Fayette's commission is to be renewed or a successor 
to be appointed." 

It was said that the Fete of the Federation had " no 
to-morrow." Riots continued through the summer and 
autumn. An episode from Lenotre ^^ is apropos: 

" On November 13th, 1790, ten thousand people pro- 
ceeded to the Rue de Varenne, burst open the doors 
of the house, threw the furniture out of the windows, 
smashed the window panes, and set fire to the pic- 
tures. ... A jovial crowd had collected in the 
street. ... A man of forty years of age, standing 
on a column at the gateway of the house, followed 
the progress of this destruction with much interest. 
. . . His name was Rotondo, a professor of lan- 
guages, . . . He amused people by his unintelli- 
gible lingo, a mixture of English, Italian, French, and 
Flemish. . . . Now, when La Fayette, at the head 
of a small body of National Guards, caracoled, on this 

'^Jean Baptiste Gouvion (1747-1702), second in command 
of the National Guard, took part in the campaign in America 
as an officer of engineers. Greatly attached to La Fayette, 
he was in 1789 appointed Major-General of the National Guard. 
Deputy of Paris in 1791, he sent in his resignation in 1792, 
and died in action near Maubeuge on the nth of the follow- 
ing June. — " Miemoirs of Prince Talleyrand." 

^ " Romances of the French Revolution," vol. vi. 
292 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

occasion, into the rue de Varenne and attempted to 
force a way through the crowd, the general called out 
to the personage, who, full of importance, was sur- 
veying the scene from the top of his column. Rotondo 
replied in such an unintelligible manner that the puz- 
zled La Fayette exclaimed : * What's that you say ? 
What's your nationality ? English or Italian ? ' The 
professor spluttered in great emotion. ' Moitic Vun, 
moitic y autre ' — half one and half the other. The poor 
man pronounced the word moitic as though it were 
motic, and this won for him a veritable triumph. His 
reply was received with a burst of applause. ' There's 
your answer ! Did you hear ? Long live Rotondo ! ' 
The crowds seized him by the hands, repeated the 
phrase over and over again, and hooted the nonplussed 
horsemen. It must be explained that motie was La 
Fayette's patronymic, the name by which wags invaria- 
bly called him, just as they surnamed Louis XVI 
Capet. . . . The phrase ' Motie run, motie r autre/ 
pregnant with ironical meaning, had unmasked ' the 
janus-faced man, the democratic marquees, the revolu- 
tionary courtier.' It was greeted with a roar of laughter, 
an outburst of joy; it came as a huge relief to the 
people ; it was the revenge for eighteen months' infatua- 
tion and popularity. Prints were published represent- 
ing La Fayette with two faces ' a patriot by day and a 
valet de cour by night,' or symbolizing him by a candle 
* which burns brightly in the presence of the people, 
but stank in good company.' In short, Rotondo 
was celebrated." 

As a matter of fact, Rotondo, whom the volatile 
Parisians thus lionized, was. a swindler. M. Lenotre 
traces his career for some years. He was arrested on a 
charge of shooting at La Fayette in the Champ de Mars. 
The La Fayettists mauled him. He was a Septembrist, 
and is said to have held up the Princess de Lamballe's 
head under Marie Antoinette's window. He was in 
many prisons, including Chillon. M. Lenotre concludes 
that " hanging was the logical end of such a man." 

In January the King's aunts left Paris, and took up. 
their residence in Rome. On February 28th occurred 

293 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the Battle of the Canes. In his " Memoirs " Baron 
Thiebault says that " it may be divided into two scenes, 
one by day and the other by night." 

" The day scene took place at Vincennes, which was 
used as a state prison. The people attacked it like the 
Bastille with the view of demolishing it; but M. de La 
Fayette drove them away. The night, or rather evening, 
scene passed at the Tuileries, where I know not how 
many Royalists suddenly assembled, provided with con- 
cealed arms. Some one said it was in order to protect 
the King at a moment when the populace was in move- 
ment — a wretched reason because the National Guard 
could do that better than they. Others asserted that 
the object was to carry off the King and his family, 
taking advantage of an uproar got up as they said and 
effected by the ringleaders of the party who were 
to profit by the move; and that was why they had 
selected Vincennes rather than any other place to get 
La Fayette out of the way. But he had news in time 
of what was going on at the palace ; he galloped back, 
and at the head of some companies of grenadiers, includ- 
ing mine, by a free use of musket-butts he made all 
those insurgents — insurgents of a new species — get 
quickly out of it. Pursued through the apartments they 
were lucky to be able to escape by the way of the great 
gallery, and the old Louvre, which no one had thought 
of guarding. So ended the game of those gallants who 
were called ' Knights of the Foinard.' " ^* 

At Eastertide, April i8, the Court made believe that 
it was going to St. Cloud. It was a device to notify 
the rest of royal Europe of its detention at the Tuileries. 
Tocsins were sounded ; exits were blocked ; the Queen 
was vilified. 

" La Fayette wanted to force a passage, but nobody 
obeyed him. He then hastened to the Hotel de Ville, 
and demanded the red flag. Danton, who luckily was 
there, ordered the flag to be refused; and perhaps pre- 
vented a massacre; for La Fayette, being then igno- 
rant that the supposed departure was only a feint, would 

'''* " Romance of the French Revolution," vol. vi. 
294 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

have ^^ acted with the utmost rigor of the law. After 
leaving Danton at the Hotel de Ville, he found him 
again at the Tuileries, at the head of the battalion of 
the Cordeliers, which had repaired thither without 
being ordered. At the end of two hours the Court 
reentered the palace, having sufficiently proved what 
it had desired. La Fayette, indignant at having been 
disobeyed, tendered his resignation ; but an immense 
majority of the National Guard entreated him to re- 
main ; for the citizen class trusted to him alone for the 
maintenance of the public peace." 

So writes Michelet, who adds : " La Fayette, very 
subtle in this matter, pretends that Danton acted thus 
only because he was paid to do so by the Court. ' He 
had just received,' says he, * a hundred thousand francs 
as pay for an employment which was worth but ten.' 
What is more sure is that Danton, by causing the flag 
to be refused, mortified the General, but prevented 
him from committing a crime." 

La Fayette's power was very great at this time. 
Not that it was in any sense secure, or even promising 
of security. The storm w^as unspent. There were 
rumblings every day. Every month great plots de- 
veloped. The banishment of the most despicable of 
plotters did not mend matters. There w^ere too many 
instigators ; too many Jacobins and too many confreres 
of Danton passing in or out at that " Sibylline den of 
the Revolution, the Club of Cordeliers." On the other 
hand, these facts should be put together : La Fayette 
wanted a freer France, with a merciful and beneficent 
charter; a ruler amenable to the will of the nation; a 
stable government based upon equity and the affection 
of the happy masses. He had looked to the Con- 
stitution to bring about these great reforms and 
now the Constitution was almost ready. Dread- 

^^This is Michelet again, identifying La Fayette with 
counter-revolution. " Would have " assumes. 

295 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ful as the disorders had been, shameful as were 
the scenes, or some of them, through which France 
had passed, she might soon emerge in strength and 
glory. So must La Fayette have felt, as he rid him- 
self of the mud and misery of that nightmare campaign 
to and fro on the Versailles road. 

La Fayette was still to be for a long while a chief 
worker, a popular son of France, a leader with staunch 
supporters; but, as one now clearly sees, the seeds of 
fury were already sown. He could not but have felt 
that much was amiss, and could not but have grieved at 
the flight of such affrighted deputies as Mounier and 
Lally Tollendal. He tried to coax them back. 

And, as for John Paul Marat, how could La Fay- 
ette help antagonizing so virulent and venomous and 
implacable a man ? 

For now at last we are coming to more terrible men 
and more terrible scenes. Mirabeau and La Fayette 
will soon be giving way to Marat, Danton, Robespierre. 

This Marat, a Swiss, a doctor, a writer, somehow 
developed a murderous mind. His appetite grew by 
what it fed on. At a time when most men were bitten 
with a craze for tearing down, he played the game of 
demagogue to the very gutter. Dwarfish and dirty, 
he prostituted his extraordinary, his fiery, talents to the 
bloody business of levelling. There was something in 
him, a certain meanness, that made him intolerant of the 
men who led. La Fayette was but one of the many 
under his curse. He hated kings, yet burned in his soul 
to be King of the Rabble. But the devil should have 
his due. Marat was no bribe-taker. And another point 
is urged in his behalf : " Marat was mad," say those 
who excuse him. Marat's biographer intimates repeat- 
edly that La Fayette's police paid altogether too much 
attention to " The People's friend." Once La Fayette 
" marched six thousand men on Marat's house." Marat 

296 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

wanted it understood that " against one man in particu- 
lar all patriots were to be on their guard ; and that man 
was Motier La Fayette." At times Marat's abuse was 
subtle. He made the credulous groan and the lovers of 
ridicule laugh. In his Ami du Peuple, No. 319, he says : 

" La Fayette has ordered fifteen thousand snuff- 
boxes, all ornamented with his likeness, to be made 
in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. There is something 
suspicious in this. I entreat all good citizens who are 
able to procure any to destroy them. I am sure that 
the secret of the great plot will be found in them." ^^ 

Marat was now overtopping Desmoulins, w^hose 
impediment of speech, by the by, made him all the more 
impressive, Michelet declares : " His lively sallies, play- 
ing about his lips, escaped like darts." But Marat had 
fire and venom on the tip of his quill, which, in course 
of time, he dipped in human blood. There is but 
one excuse for Marat: It may be that he was a 
scourge sent to lash ignorant and humble millions 
into a recognition of their rights. 

But Danton was rising, too ; and the moment Mira- 
beau died there arose that other son of wrath and woe. 
" On the very day after Mirabeau's death," says Miche- 
let, " Robespierre assumed a new, audacious and almost 
imperious tone." Four days later he forced a decree 
" that no member of the Assembly could be raised to 
the ministry during the four years following the ses- 
sion. . . . Five weeks later, May i6th, Robespierre 
proposed and caused to be decreed that the members' 
of the Assembly could not be elected to the next 
legislature." 

These concessions constituted one of the gravest 
blunders of the beneficent Revolution. The men who 
had wrought out the Constitution did not permit them- 
selves to safeguard their own work until it had been 

'' " Life of Marat," by Ernest Belfut Bax. 
297 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

tested. There was something of suicide in their act 
of self-suppression. We have done our work ; we die. 
They gave way to newer men, without experience; to 
reckless men — to Robespierre. In two extraordinarily 
selfish and brazen moves, neither of which would have 
been attempted if Mirabeau had been alive, he won 
strategical advantages that in time, after Danton's 
day, enabled him to become master. 

Robespierre was a small-bodied man, shy, shrill- 
voiced and lacking alike in the gifts and graces of an 
orator. His eyes were blue. He wore glasses. Mira- 
beau was impressed with his stern qualities. " He 
believes every word he says. He will go far." Though 
lately from Arras, in Artois, where his father had been 
a lawyer, Robespierre knew his Paris well. He had 
been ten years in the College of Louis le Grand. Indeed 
the Council of the College, proud of his conduct, his 
excellence as a student and his " eminent talents," 
had accorded Sieur de Robespierre " a gratification 
of 600 livres." 

But we have not as yet come to the Terror. We 
have just told of the march to Versailles and back. 
After storm, calm. That was the rule in the Revolu- 
tion. In Paris there was a lull, but in Coblenz, a ren- 
dezvous of exiles, and many another border town, 
royalists were plotting. Their work was made all the 
easier by the fall of feudalism and by the kidnapping 
of the King. Lords liked not the levelling in France ; 
rulers in principalities and kingdoms throughout the 
world wondered whether the terrible furore for equality 
would spread to their own dominions. And as for Louis 
and his Queen, cooped up in the Tuileries, they, too, 
plotted harder than ever. 

Paris, as it thought, now had the King and Queen 
in a trap, in the Tuileries; and it had something else 
entrapped — the Assembly, which foolishly moved from 

298 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Versailles and installed itself in a riding-school 
(Manege) near the revamped palace. Newspapers 
multiplied. Clubs grew more powerful. Only some 
three hundred yards from the National Assembly in the 
Rue St. Honore was the old Breton club, now the 
Jacobin, with 1300 members. Its real name was "The 
Society of the Friends of the Constitution." Sieyes, 
himself " king of pamphleteers," spoke of the Jacobins 
as " a set of wicked blackguards." " Their club," he 
declared, " is a den of thieves ; they take outrages for 
expedients." Not so in the excusatory Michelet's opin- 
ion. He argues that the Jacobins were a necessity of 
the Revolution. It was either : " Go back to perpetual 
slavery, or go forward with these active men who by this 
time had their societies through France. The Jaco- 
bins are not the Revolution — but the eye of the Revo- 
lution — the eye to watch, the voice to accuse, and the 
arm to strike." The Revolution was on the point of 
failure more than once ; but for the Jacobins, counter- 
revolution would have prevailed. They formed " a 
legion of public accusers." Terrible were their 
methods ; yet the aristocrats fought them wath skill 
year after year. Duport, Barnave and the Lameths — 
these in their time were the Jacobin leaders. Each 
played many desperate games — secret or bold or 
bloody; but they wore out, as Mirabeau did; and as 
their successor, the all-powerful Robespierre, was to 
do. One can but glance at the Jacobins, but their 
deeds were multiple and marvellous. Danton led the 
terrible Cordeliers. While nothing is left of the famous 
buildings associated with the Revolution,-'^' says Belloc, 

" In the Musee Carnavalet, Madame de Sevigne's old 
home, there is a timepiece with two dials ; the second showing 
decimal time, in accordance with the scheme for a ten-hour 
day, each hour divided into lOO minutes, and each minute 
into 100 seconds. It was apparently constructed in 1791. fo'" 
it has portraits of the King, La Fayette and Bailly. — " Paris 
in 178Q-94." 

299 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" one historic room remains — the hall in which the 
Cordeliers debated is\ now the Musee Dupuyteren, full 
of skeletons and physiological anomalies." Originally 
the hall belonged to the Franciscans ; that of the Jaco- 
bin club belonged to the convent of the Jacobin monks. 
The Jacobins were sans-ciilottes — without breeches. 
The Girondists constituted the most moderate of the 
Republican parties. They were so named for the 
Department of the Gironde in Southwestern France. 

With the clubs planning, the Court plotting, the 
mob element alert, there was constant employment for 
Bailly and La Fayette. ^^ As an instance, we have at 
Christmas the plot of the Marquis de Favras. He 
planned to murder La Fayette, Bailly and Necker (who 
had resigned once more) and carry oflP the King, by 
whom the Comte de Provence was to be succeeded. 
Favras was sentenced to death. We have already noted 
thp death of Mirabeau ^^ (April 2, 1791), whose friends 
thought so lovable and foes so hateful.*^ Camille Des- 

^ Mirabeau said of La Fayette : " He is not so great as 
singular; his character more fussy than actually strong; a 
generous man, but romantic and chimerical, living in illusions." 
— " Mirabeau," by P. F, Willert. Mirabeau is said to have 
pretended to be wickeder than he was, when in La Fayette's 
presence, because of the General's " punctilious propriety." 
Mirabeau sought La Fayette's support, and was angry at his 
seeming desertion. But Mirabeau shocked La Fayette by his 
lack of principle. La Fayette would not go with him, for the 
simple reason that Mirabeau could not be trusted. He told 
Marie Antoinette that La Fayette was a party to the diamond 
plot, an absurd story, quite unbelievable even by the Queen. 

^*Here is a passage from a letter by Walpole to the 
Countess of Upper Ossory. " How unlike the villain Mira- 
beau to Washington ! How odious a reformer who acts from 
ambition or interest! and what are moments of gratified 
ambition or interest to the endless obloquy!" — "Walpole," 
xvi, p. 424. 

** " Had he [Mirabeau] lived it is impossible to guess what 
the course of the Revolution might have been. But he sickens, 
is worn out with quackery and real illness . . . takes to his 
bed and dies apparently of colic or appendicitis — of course 
incorrectly treated." — Aulard. 

300 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

moulins said : *' I loved him like a mistress." Des- 
moulins, gay, witty, had not yet suffered full eclipse. 
*' When the eyes of Mirabeau were closed," says Cecil 
Headlam, ** Danton, Camille Desmoulins and their 
comrades in the club of the Cordeliers soon became 
more powerful than La Fayette, Bailly and the fre- 
quenters of the salon of Madame de Stael. The power 
of the press was on their side " — a new thing, potent, 
wonder-working. In the Assembly were the Feuillants, 
La Fayette's constitutional party, the Republican 
Girondins and the radical Montagnards. The 
Queen was planning; the King was watching the 
move against the clergy, whom he defended with 
more than customary vigor. 

Then — Paris was startled one morning to learn that 
the King and Queen had fled. 

Out of the trap, out of the cage — they were by no 
means white mice ! Lion and Lioness rather ! — espe- 
cially if, in an appeal to Europe, through the Count 
d'Artois, the Prince of Conde, and those thousands of 
exiles, they should return with a royalist army. 

Count Jean Axel de Fersen (a Swede, born 1755, 
assassinated June 20, 1809), an intimate friend of 
Marie Antoinette — a youthful lover, in fact, and much 
attached to her — planned the escape. Louis often 
looked at the fine portraits of Charles I of England at 
the Tuileries. He grew moody ; did not speak a word 
for ten days at a time ; his sole thought was to get away. 
There were exasperating postponements. Finally, on 
June 20, it was agreed that they should turn their backs 
on Paris that night. La Fayette's trusted adherent, 
Major-General Gouvion, of the National Guard, was 
billeted in the palace. To the King's faithful and 
attached ex-bodyguard, M. de Valory, who quizzed 
him, General Gouvion exclaimed : " I will wager my 
head that the King has not the least desire to leave 

301 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Paris." M. de Valory at once went to the Queen. 
His approach startled her. *' I thought I recognized 
M. de La Fayette's footsteps," said she ; " that man 
frightens me so that I fancy I see or hear him every 
minute. . . . Can we get away from here without 
being recognized? . . . M. de La Fayette has 
doubled the guards in every direction." " Madame," 
said M. de Valory, " he has taken this precaution to re- 
assure those who are uneasy, and to quiet the grumblers, 
rather than because he has any fears himself." But 
he would again test M. de Gouvion. Louis entered. 
He said : " If they suspect nothing we shall easily get 
away. ... I shall spend to-morrow night at the 
Abbaye d'Orval. The Marquis of Bouille is awaiting 
me before Montmedy with an army corps. Strong de- 
tachments are stationed at Pont de Somme Vesle, 
Sainte Menehould, Clermont, Varennes and Dun. 
When you reach the Pont de Somme Vesle, ask for the 
Duke of Choiseul ; he is in command of the squadron of 
Lauzun's hussars which is stationed there; he will 
obtain an interview for you with the aide-de-camp of 
M. de Bouille." *i He added: ''This evening at half- 
past eleven ! " 

At five the Queen went with her children to the 
Tivoli Gardens, returning at seven. She warned them 
to take what was about to happen quietly. " She kissed 
me," said Madame Royal. 

The King's brother, the Comte de Provence, took 
leave of the Queen, his sister, Madame Elizabeth, and 
Louis, whom he never again saw. Dinner was as usual ; 
the evening passed as usual. 

The Queen went out at the unguarded door of the 
Court of the Princes to see her children off. Count 
Fersen, disguised as a coachman, sat on the box of 

*^ " Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries," by Imbert de Saint- 
Amand. 

302 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

a hackney coach. Soon he drove off with Mme. de 
Tourzel, the Dauphin and Madame Royal. To kill 
time he " took a turn around the Quai, and then came 
back by the Rue St. Honore to the Petit Carrousel. 
He waited three-quarters of an hour, but no one came. 
La Fayette's carriage, guarded by dragoons, drove by 
with flashing lights. La Fayette was on his way to the 
coucher of the King, whom he held a long time in con- 
versation, for grave suspicions of flight that night had 
been aroused. La Fayette at last drove away. The King 
was seen to bed by the servants who had charge of the 
rooms. The doors of the great gallery were locked 
by the porter in attendance, and the keys were placed 
in the mattress, where they were found next morning. 
As soon as the King was left alone, he got up and 
dressed for the flight. . . . Mme. Elizabeth 
entered the waiting coach. Then the King approached. 
His shoe-buckle had become loose and he had ' stopped 
to arrange it, with all the coolness in the world.' They 
waited for the Queen some little while ; and it was prob- 
ably then that La Fayette's carriage passed a second 
time, and the King could not repress an insulting excla- 
mation as it flashed by him. He looked upon La Fay- 
ette as his jailer." They were in agony because of the 
non-arrival of Marie Antoinette. At last she came 
gliding up. She had lost her way. Moreover, says 
Imbert de Saint- Amand, *' she had just been greatly 
alarmed by seeing the carriage of General La Fayette, 
who was coming from the Tuileries, where he had made 
his rounds after being present in the King's bed-cham- 
ber. The apparition of a ghost could not have fright- 
ened Marie Antoinette more. Several lackeys sur- 
rounded the carriage, holding lighted torches which 
shed so much light that the fugitives, persuaded that the 
general was about to recognize her, quitted M. de 
Moustier's arm and fled in a different direction. M. de 

303 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Moustier tried to reassure her by pointing out that the 
torches placed between her and La Fayette must dazzle 
the latter's eyes, and prevent his recognition of her." 
In her terror, she fled into the darkness,^- got among the 
small streets and alleys; and at last reached Count 
Fersen's coach. Then Fersen started. He took a 
roundabout course. It was about two o'clock when 
he reached the Barriere de Clinchy. It was the short- 
est night of the year. Soon it would be daybreak. 
" The guard-house at the barrier was lighted up. 
Everyone was en fete. A marriage was being cele- 
brated with drinking and dancing, and the royal party 
passed unrecognized." ^^ 

Awaiting them, just beyond, was a double-seated 
berline, built ostensibly for Baroness de Korflf, but 
really to be used on this very excursion. The body was 
painted black and green; the running gear yellow. 
Four Norman horses drew it. Balthasar Sapel rode 
pK>stilion. M. de Moustier was on the box. The great 
mistake made by Louis was in refusing to permit Count 
Fersen to keep on with the party. He was a man 
of brains — full of forethought, of expedients. As he 
mounted his horse to spur away towards Brussels, he 
cried out to the postilion : " Come on, now ! Be bold ! 
Drive fast ! " Again he shouted : " Courage, Balthasar ! 
Quicker ! Put the pace on ! Away ! Away ! " 

Balthasar rode furiously — three leagues in half an 
hour. M. de Valory, on horseback, kept well ahead. 
Two were on the box — de Maiden and de Moustier. 

*^ There is a story that Marie Antoinette that night, in 
childish joy in having tricked her jailer, struck the wheel of 
La Fayette's coach with a switch that she had in her hand, 
such as ladies were in the habit of carrying. " The thing is 
difficult to be believed," comments Michelet ; " the coach was 
going very fast and it was surrounded by lackeys on horse- 
back carrying torches." 

^ " My Scrapbook of the French Revolution," E. W. 
Latimer. 

304 




Copyright by Braun and Co. 

MADAME ELIZABETH. SISTER OF LOUIS XVI 
From the painting by LeBrun 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Louis was disguised in a grey coat and little wig as 
a valet-de-chamhre. Mme. de Tourzel masqueraded as 
Baroness de Korff; the Queen was governess to her 
daughters — Anielie (the dauphin) and Aglae, his sis- 
ter (Madame Royal). Madame Elizabeth was their 
nurse. The Queen was Madame Rochet. Two of her 
ladies followed in a post-chaise.^* 

" The King was in high spirits. * At last/ he said, 
* I have escaped from that town of Paris where I have 
drunk so much bitterness.* At eight, he looked at his 
watch and remarked : ' La Fayette must be in a terrible 
state of mind now.' By this time he ought to be a good 
deal embarrassed about his own safety. . . . Before 
reaching Chalons the horses fell twice. . . . That 
caused a delay. So the fugitives were two hours late at 
Chalons-sur-Marne." 

Nevertheless all was going well. The King was 
happy. A hundred times he looked back along the 
road. He saw nothing but drifting dust clouds. It was 
not aJ sunny day; the sky was overcast. Fresh horses 
paid their due of sweat and lather. Balthasar seemed 
still to hear : " Come now ! Be bold ! Drive fast ! " 

" When we have passed Chalons," said M. de Valory 
(who was ' Francois ' in the make-believe), " we shall 
have nothing more to fear." The Queen showed 
anxiety. She liked to be reassured. They left Chalons 
at half-past five, entered Pont de Somme Vesle, where 
they looked about them for the Duke de Choiseul, 
colonel of the Royal Dragoons. In vain. The Marquis 
de Bouille had promised to have him there. Bouille had 
sent Choiseul ; but he had come and gone. ** The 

^ See " Memoires de Madame de Tourzel " ; " Madame 
Royal's Narrative," and especially G. Lenotre's detailed ac- 
count in " The Flight of Marie Antoinette." Mme. KorfF was 
a Russian Baroness, a friend of Fersen. In this hero one rec- 
ognizes a bold campaigner of the American Revolution. He 
was to rejoin Marie Antoinette at Montmedy. 
20 305 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

earth," said Louis, " seemed to open beneath me." 
" Choiseul did none of the things that were expected 
of him." There was a stupid mix-up. Fersen would 
have arranged matters, and gone on ; but there was no 
one in the King's party masterful enough to overcome 
the difficulties. At Ste. Menehould, *' knots of people 
gathered in the streets. . . . Just as the fresh 
horses were being harnessed, J. B. Drouet, the post- 
master, an ardent republican, arrived from a field he 
had been cultivating in the neighborhood. He was a 
young man of twenty-eight, but he had served in the 
Conde dragoons, and had seen the Queen at Versailles. 
He now thought he recognized her. At this moment 
the King put his head out of the window to speak to 
M. de Valory; and Drouet, by a sudden inspiration, 
compared the portrait on the assignat which M. de 
Valory had just paid him for the relay, with the head 
of the traveler." ^^ 

When the King had pased on, Drouet mounted 
and followed. A royalist dragoon was close upon 
Drouet. At Clermont-en-Argonne there was trouble 
for the fugitives, but they got away. It seemed to 
such of the dragoons along the line of flight as were 
in the King's secret that he was now within easy gallop- 
ing distance of his goal. Once at Varennes, he would 
be safe. After Varennes — Montmedy and royalist bay- 
onets ! But the relay was on the hither side of Varennes. 
The berline was at this post awaiting fresh horses 
when Drouet and another shot past, shouting : " Don't 
go on ! Unharness your horses ! It is the King ! " 
When the berline reached the Bras-d'Or in Varennes, 

^Lenotre, in his circumstantial account of "The Flight of 
Marie Antoinette," p. 64, doubts the assignat story. But Sieur 
Drouet was alert that evening, along with scores of others. At 
the posting-house in Sainte Menehould Captain d'Andoins had 
cried : " Get away quickly ! You're lost if you don't hurry." 
Elsewhere there were cries of " Stop ! Stop !" It was a main 
road they were on— a long white road much frequented. 

306 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

at half-past eleven o'clock, it was instantly surrounded 
by men with torches. " Who are you ? " they demanded. 
" Madame de Korff and her family." " It is possible, 
but it must be proved." M. Sauce, the Mayor, invited 
the whole party to step within. The house was theirs. 
The tocsin sounded. All night there was commotion 
in the square. The Queen went up a corkscrew stair ; 
the place smelled of tallow, which she especially dis- 
liked. In a little back-room " was collected the Majesty 
of France." They still hoped for Bouille. Why did 
he not come ? — and with a sweep, a clatter of hoofs and 
a clash of sabres ? But instead of Bouille's step on the 
stairs, they heard another's. It was that of M. de 
Romeuf, La Fayette's aide-de-camp. The King knew 
him at once ; so did Marie Antoinette, who said : " Sir, 
is that you ? I never could have believed it." 

Down the corkscrew stairs stepped King, Queen 
and all the fugitives, who were now prisoners. Theirs 
was a dismal return from Varennes. All day on the 
25th of June they felt the power of the sun — and the 
people. An immense mob was at the Barriere de 
rfitoile. La Fayette protected the King and Queen until 
they had reached the point of their departure. Accord- 
ing to Paul Gaulot's book, " A Friend of the Queen " 
(Count de Fersen being the friend), Marie Antoinette 
cried out " wildly " : " Monsieur de La Fayette, save 
the bodyguards ! " when, having approached the Tuile- 
ries, she beheld a threatening mob. Gaulot goes on : 

" M. de La Fayette, on horseback, presided at the 
arrival. The carriage doors were opened ; the King 
stepped out — silence. The Queen appeared — murmurs 
arose. M. de Noailles, a Liberal deputy, advanced to 
offer her his arm. The haughty daughter of Maria 
Theresa, vanquished but not subdued, declined it, and 
took the arm of a deputy of the right. . . . General 
La Fayette presented himself and said to the King, 
* Sire, your Majesty knows my attachment to you, but 

307 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

I have not concealed from you that if you separated 
your cause from that of the people, I should remain on 
the side of the people.' * That is true,' replied the King ; 
* you have acted on your principles ; it is an affair of 
party. Now I am here, I will tell you frankly that until 
lately I have believed that you surrounded me with a 
crowd of people of your own way of thinking who did 
not represent the mind of France. The journey has 
plainly shown me my mistake.' ' Has your Majesty 
any commands to give me ? ' ' It seems to me,' said the 
King, laughing, ' that I am more at your command than 
you at mine.' No one could be more good natured, 
and he took his hard lot as well as a man could take 
it. The Queen had not that virtue, or rather that weak- 
ness. Treating La Fayette as a gaoler, she wanted to 
force him to receive the keys of the cash-boxes which 
had been left in the carriage, and as he refused, she 
threw them upon his hat. ' Your Majesty will have the 
trouble of taking them back again,' he said, ' for I will 
not touch them.' 'Very well,' she replied; *I shall 
find persons less scrupulous than you.' " 

" It is devilish hot," said Louis as he seated him- 
self in an arm-chair with an air of a weary one, home 
at last ; *' I made a wretched journey there. But it had 
been running in my head a long time. . . . Let 
someone bring be a chicken." *^ 

During these five June days La Fayette had been 
much maligned. ^' We have seen how careful he 
had been to keep in touch with Louis, who was not his 
prisoner — at least, not admittedly such — but who was 

'^ " Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries," by Imbert de Saint- 
Amand. 

^^ By the force of circumstances La Fayette found him- 
self to be the involuntary guardian of the King, and respon- 
sible to the Nation for his person ; he had shown in various 
ways, and som^etimes even in compromising the Revolution, 
that he desired above everything else the restoration of kingly 
power, as a guarantee of order and tranquillity. Although a 
Republican in ideas and theory, he had nevertheless sacrificed 
to monarchy — his weakness and ruling passion — his popularity. 
There was every reason to suppose that at the startling news 
of the King's departure, La Fayette would be torn to pieces. — 
Michelet, " French Revolution," p. 593. 

308 



IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

under both his surveillance and protection. It was the 
Dauphin's doctor, going his rounds, who had alarmed 
La Fayette.*^ At first the doctor was disbelieved. 
Then, at the Tuileries, La Fayette saw with his own 
eyes that the cage was empty. He went at once to the 
Assembly. On the way he was assaulted. Men threat- 
ened to kill him. He was accused of having connived 
at the royal absconder's trick. Subsequently he went 
to the Hotel de Ville, whence his aides-de-camp were 
dispatched on the trail of the fugitives. Camille Des- 
moulins said in his newspaper: " This general scamper 
of the male and female Capets took place at eleven 
o'clock in the evening, and the news did not get about 
until nine the next morning. Treason ! Perjury ! Bar- 
nave and La Fayette abuse our confidence." Danton, 
at the Cordeliers, referring to La Fayette, cried : '' You 
swore that the King should not depart ; you made 
vourself his surety. Of two things, one — either you 
are a traitor who has betrayed his country, or you 
are stupid in having made yourself answerable for a 
person for whom you could not answer. In the most 
favorable case you have proven yourself incapable of 
commanding us. I descend from the tribune; I have 
said enough to demonstrate that I despise traitors, and 
I do not fear assassins." 

■^ According to Lcnotre : La Fayette was still asleep in 
his house in the Rue de Bourbon (now de Lille) at the corner 
of the Rue de Courty when his friend d'Andre, deputy from 
Aix, dashed into his room and imparted the news. " He sprang 
from his bed and dressed himself at lightning speed." He 
went to the Carrousel on foot. Only Romeuf was with him. 
People cried " Traitor ! " The crowd was immense. He tow- 
ered above it, " in his great cockaded two-cornered hat." Bailly 
met him at the Rue du Bac, " looking very gloomy." La Fayette 
was cool, " dignified, almost gay." " The square was like a 
tempestuous sea." La Fayette said : " Do you think the arrest 
of the King and his family necessary for the good of the 
public ? " " Undoubtedly ; but by what right can he be arrested? 
Where is the authority? Who will give the order? "Oh, 
well, I will take the responsibility myself," said La Fayette. 
And he did. 

309 



VII 
HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

Hundreds of books on the French Revolution — 
some important, others not — refer to La Fayette. No 
doubt all such books do, when he is within their scope, 
though many must have escaped us. In the nature of 
things, he is often commended ; sometimes assailed ; as 
a rule, he is considerately dealt with. Those who treat 
of the silken side of the ancien regime are prone to 
lament his participation in the deadly assault upon their 
idealized occupants of chateaux and castles whereof 
the roofs, towers and battlements catch the charm of 
sunsets and romance. Old France is fascinating in his- 
tory, in fiction, in drama. Snug by a fire, in library 
nooks, in comfort themselves, readers see not the sub- 
mergence of the millions ; and wonder why a rich 
lord should turn against his class. They are by no 
means heartless — rather are they unpenetrative in their 
examination of a deceptive and complex subject. They 
are quite ready to believe La Fayette a failure; after 
a hundred years in which most of them have shared in 
the blessings of freedom due, in some degree, to him, 
they wonder why the world exalts him. On the other 
hand, the great writers measure him as did his con- 
temporaries, by his largeness of soul, by his love of 
liberty, by his fidelity to his creed, by his sacrifices 
and by the great reforms in which he participated. 
Nor do they forget what has happened in republican 
growth since 1792. They judge him as a man ungifted 
with fore-knowledge concerning the issue of events, but 
guided by the best light of his tempestuous time. 

It v^ould seem that as we are at the end of the 
period of La Fayette's service to the Revolution, we 
may pause for a moment to consider some of the 
things said in his disfavor. 

310 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

Immediately after the episode of the King's flight, 
" Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart " began to bay the 
moon and howl at the Hotel de Ville. La Fayette 
would not have minded this, being used, as he was, to 
calumny as well as compliments, had not the chorus 
been swollen by the ominous wild wailing of wolves 
infinitely worse than the wolves of Auvergne — those 
monsters, we mean, bred by the Revolution, and made 
ferocious in its shambles. Necessarily La Fayette's 
office invited abuse of him — thunderous like Danton's 
or petty like that of the ladies of the palace who, "within 
hearing of his officers, called him a brigand." Louis 
wrote to the Comte d'Artois describing La Fayette as a 
" villain, a factious fanatic, in whom no confidence 
could be placed." According to Mallet du Pan, it was 
M. de Stael who said of La Fayette and Bailly, after 
the sack of the Hotel de Castries : " These gentlemen 
are like the rainbow, they always come after the storm.'* 
Vergniaud styled La Fayette (October 25, 1791) "a 
pigmy Caesar." ^ In fact, his friend and old commander, 
who, at that very time, was the object of all sorts of 
abuse, three thousand miles away, suffered less calum- 
nious criticism than La Fayette. Bitter things were 
being said of Washington ; the very bitterest of La 
Fayette. For instance, Mallet du Pan gives this in his 
" Memoirs and Correspondence " ^ : 

** Andre has acknowledged to me that the Constitu- 
tionalists never had any plan from day to day and 
from motions to motions. They met in committee at 
the Duke de Rochefoucauld's. La Fayette, D'Andre, 
Chapelier, the Bishop of Autun, Emery, Beaumetz, 
Crillon, Liancourt, Montmorency, Toulongeon, formed 
this committee. Chapelier at the end of a quarter of 

an hour, rose and went to A. M , the Bishop of 

Autun fell asleep. They never came to any resolu- 

^ " Paris in 1789-94," by John Goldworth Alger, p. 46. 
^Vol. ii, p. 499. 

311 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

tlon; they were jealous of the power of La Fayette, 
regarding him almost as an imbecile who knew nothing 
but bowing to the National Guard." 

Nevertheless *the makers of the Constitution,^ 
thanks to La Fayette, Sieyes, Mirabeau and the more 
persistent among the six hundred deputies, had labored 
long and well. A glance at their apologia, their first 
address to their constituents, helps us to appreciate this : 

*' We have had to combat with the inveterate preju- 
dices of ages, and great changes are attended by a 
thousand uncertainties. Our successors will be enlight- 
ened by our experience ; as for us, we have endeavored 
to trace a new route by the light of principles only. 
They will labor in peace, but we have been tried with 
dreadful storms. They will know their rights and the 
limits of the several powers ; we have recovered the 
first and have fixed the second. They will consolidate 
our work ; they will surpass us, and that shall be 
our recompense." 

Who can read these passages without some subtle 
intimation in his own soul of their profundity and 
significance? How can one read them without the 
feeling that they expressed a beneficent purpose in 
which La Fayette had shared from the very beginning? 

Far from perfect, embodying unnecessary and pro- 
vocative provisions, such as those relating to the clergy, 
it was none the less an achievement. There is a gran- 
deur in the farewell of the deputies ; and grandeur in 
what they did. Do historical theorists speak sneer- 
ingly of them ? What matters it ? What, indeed, since 
they were the first architects of a better France ! 
It is everlastingly to their credit, and everlastingly 
to the credit of La Fayette, that they overthrew 
the despotism of the ancien regime, and took the 
first actual practical steps towards modernizing 
French civilization. All who were engaged in the 

^ For this Constitution, see " Constitutions and Docu- 
ments, France, 1789-1901," by Frank Maloy Anderson. 

312 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

work made bitter enemies. La Fayette had, by this time, 
become surrounded by them. But it is of no concern 
that Mallet du Pan, a royalist agent, active at Coblenz, 
Geneva, Brussels and Berne, accuses him of '' imbe- 
cility." It is to La Fayette's credit that Mallet du Pan 
writes against him. Is it not in the nature of a dis- 
proof of certain other anti-La Fayettisms of that 
period — such as the intimation of La Fayette's duplic- 
ity ou the French frontier? Abuse was to be expected 
from Mallet du Pan, from Vergniaud, the Girondist 
orator, from Danton and from the ingrate Court. 

One can but welcome the strictures of certain other 
critics who put La Fayette to test, sparing him not. 
Such is Michelet. In telling how the Jacobin club 
developed into " a vast committee of revolutionary 
police," he adds: 

*' La Fayette, who became acquainted, to his cost, 
with the organization, says that its nucleus was a meet- 
ing of ten men, called, by themselves, the Sabbat, who 
received every day their orders from the Lameths; 
each of the ten forwarded them to ten others, heads 
of battalions and different sections, so that all sections 
received the same denunciation against the authorities, 
and the same propositions of riot at the very same time. 
La Fayette had on his side the committee of inquiry of 
the town, and many persons devoted to him in the 
National Guard. These two bodies of police thwarted 
each other and that of the court. The police of the 
Jacobins, acting in the same direction as the popular 
movement, and going with the stream, progressed with 
as much facility as the others met with difficulty. . . . 
We have spoken of the club of '89, which La Fayette 
and Sieyes attempted, at first, to oppose to that of the 
Jacobins. That conciliatory club, which expected to 
unite the monarchy with the Revolution, would have 
ended, if it had succeeded, only in the destruction of 
the Revolution. At the present day, when so many 
things, then secret, are known to the world, we can 
boldly state that, without the strongest and most ener- 

313 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

getic influence, the Revolution would have perished: 
if it had not turned aggressive, it was lost. The impru- 
dent association of La Fayette with Bouille had inflicted 
upon it the most serious blow ; and it was through the 
Jacobins that it resumed the offensive." 

Michelet criticises La Fayette in connection with 
the massacre at Nancy, August 31, 1790. He was a 
" king of the citizen-class " ; " an Anglo-American " — 
he was led, by the wish for peace at any price, to " make 
a disastrous mistake, which had an incalculable 
influence on public events." To continue : 

*' It is no easy matter to lay aside one's ideas, preju- 
dices and habits of rank. M. de La Fayette, after hav- 
ing been, for some time, transported beyond his ideas by 
the movement of the Revolution, became gradually once 
more the Marquis de La Fayette. He wanted to please 
the Queen and gain her good-will; and there is very 
little reason to doubt that he was also desirous of 
pleasing Madame de La Fayette, an excellent woman, 
but a bigot, and, as such, addicted to retrograde ideas, 
always having mass said in her chapel by a priest who 
had not taken the civic oath.* To these family influ- 
ences, add his entirely aristocratic relationship, his 
cousin, M. de Bouille, his friends, all great lords, and, 
lastly, his staff, composed of nobles and burgess aristoc- 
racy. Under a firm and reserved exterior, he was not the 
less gained over, and in course of time changed by these 
counter-revolutionary acquaintances. A stronger mind 
than his would not have been able to withstand the 
trial. The confederation of the field of Mars com- 
pleted his infatuation. A multitude of those honest 
people who had heard so much of La Fayette in their 

* In her " Vie de Madame de La Fayette," Madame de 
Lasteyrie says : " The civil constitution of the clergy was a 
subject of great tribulation to my mother. She thought it 
her duty, precisely on account of her personal situation, to 
show her attachment to the Catholic cause. She was present, 
consequently, at the refusal to take the oath which her parish 
priest, the Cure of Saint Sulpice, made from the pulpit . . . 
My father often entertained at dinner the ecclesiastics of the 
constitutional clergy. My mother professed in their presence 
her attachment to the cause of the former bishops." 

314 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

provinces, and had then the happiness of beholding him, 
afforded the most ridiculous spectacle : they literally 
adored the man, kissing his hands and boots. Nothing 
is more sensitive and irritable than an idol of the people, 
and the situation itself abounded with causes of irrita- 
tion, being full of contrasts and violent alternatives. 
This god, in the vicissitudes of those riotous times, 
was obliged to turn superintendent of police, and even 
gendarme in cases of necessity; it once happened that, 
not being obeyed, he was obliged to arrest a man with 
his own hands and lead him to prison." 

All of which is fair in spirit; but it would appear 
that La Fayette had less to do with suppressing the 
mutiny of the regiments in the garrison at Nancy than 
is here implied. When he ordered that firm measures 
be used, he was simply expressing the will of the As- 
sembly ; he could have had no idea that two thousand 
lives would be lost ; or two hundred, or twenty or 
any at all. 

Indeed, the admirable Michelet lays undue stress 
on a number of things — certainly on the Nancy horror. 
One must exculpate La Fayette with respect to the 
massacre. He had no bloody design. He was wrong 
when he caused " a decree to be passed stating that the 
King should appoint inspectors of accounts from 
among the officers." Mirabeau wanted the army torn 
apart and reconstituted. The Swiss officers, with the 
power of life or death over the men, were brutal to 
them, stole their pay and otherwise maltreated them. 
Malseigne, the inspector, was " a bully and a duelist." 
Bouille in command, blundered. The people recalled 
the fact that on July 14, 1789, the Swiss troops had 
refused to fire on them. So, when news came from 
Nancy that they had suffered outrage and death at the 
hands of aristocrats, fierce cries arose. La Fayette and 
the National Guard lost in favor. La Fayette had 
aimed to restore order and discipline ; his error was in 
providing the wrong remedy. 

315 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Let us run briefly over Fayettist affairs — let us see 
what now happened to a popular idol in process of 
becoming unpopular. Wsls it the man who changed, 
or was it the people who, suffering from a strange 
progressive malady, no longer saw with clear and 
sane vision? 

The republican clubs sought to force the Assembly 
to abandon the King. There was a demonstration 
to this end in the Champ de Mars on July 17. The 
Assembly may have failed to give way wisely and 
readjust itself to a righteous new condition ; La Fay- 
ette likewise may have failed to face facts with wisdom ; 
but the Assembly instructed Bailly and La Fayette to 
preserve order. Bailly proclaimed martial law. At 
a critical moment, Bailly himself gave the word to fire 
upon an unappeasable, a defiant mob. Some scores 
were slain. Bailly lost his hold on affairs. La Fayette, 
at the same time, lost much of his influence. This 
lessened the strength of the Feuillants, who occupied 
the Cote Droit in the new Legislative Assembly,^ and 
added to that of the cote gauche — the Revolutionists. 
It was the hour of the Girondins. The old were out ; 
the new were in,. So far the Revolution was a success. 

^Horace Walpole wrote, September 27, 1791, to Hon. 
Henry Seymour Conway ("Walpole's Letters," vol. xiv, p. 
67) : " The new Assembly will fall on the old, probably 
plunder the richest and certainly disapprove of much they 
have done ; for can 800 new ignorants approve of what has 
been done by 1200 almost as ignorant, and who were far from 
half agreeing? The Constitution would die before it had cut 
any of its teeth but its grinders. The exiles are enraged at 
their poor King for saving his own life by a forced accept- 
ance, and yet I know of no obligation he has to his noblesse, 
who all ran away to save their own lives ; not a gentleman, 
but the two poor gendarmes at Versailles, having lost their 
lives in his defense. I suppose La Fayette, Barnave, the 
Lameths, etc., will run away, too, when the new tinkers and 
cobblers, of whom the present elect are and will be com- 
posed, proceed on the levelling system taught them by their 
predecessors, who, like other leaders, have taken good care 
of themselves." 

316 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

Many had lost privileges ; few had lost anything else ; 
the gain to the masses was as a huge godsend. The 
lives lost caused sorrow ; but, except at Nancy, they 
were so few as not to excite horror — an unthought of 
word in connection with the phases of the Revolution 
in which La Fayette had participated.^ 

And there was another reason — a most important 
reason — why it jumped with La Fayette's inclination to 
retire. He especially wished to take Madame de La 
Fayette and their family to Auvergne. She had per- 
mitted the mob to prey upon her nerves — the midnight 
figment of it had begun to haunt her. She knew of the 
perils through which her husband daily passed, and was 
solicitous for him. Mile. Virginie tells of her mother's 
alarm when, during the summer, a wave of rioters broke 
over the garden w^lls at La Fayette's house, threaten- 
ing death to its occupants. Moreover, Madame de La 
Fayette, a devotee, who feared for the non-juring 
priests, was deeply concerned as to their fate. She 
needed to take refuge a while at the Chateau de Chava- 
niac; and so thither, in October, La Fayette travelled 
by coach with his whole family. One may imagine the 

^ ^ Aulard says: "The day of July 17, 1791, has a great his- 
torical importance. It was the day of a sudden blow struck 
by the bourgeoisie against the people . . . This was an act of 
civil war ; and, indeed, the war of classes, long announced, now 
began. The whole nation is divided into two hostile camps. 
Each is the result of July 17th, a day which directly or in- 
directly has influenced almost the whole 19th century." Au- 
lard's work is a political history in four volumes. The author 
was for twenty years director of the periodical la Revolu- 
tion Frangaise. Most of the references to La Fayette are in 
vol. i, "The Monarchy," 1789-1792. "He [La Fayette] was 
witty and courtly, not an orator after the revolutionary style. 
At the Federation lof 1790 his influence was enormous; he was 
the head of the armed nation. His power waned because he 
could not see that the Republic must rid itself of the throne. 
On the King's flight Barnave had to defend him against sus- 
picion. La Fayette himself assumed the responsibility of 
ordering the King's arrest. He saved himself from death 
at the hands of the suspicious populace by sheer courage 
and confidence." 

317 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

effect upon them of the quiet, the beauty, the large- 
ness, the other-worldHness of the Autumn roads, woods, 
views as they journeyed to the AlHer and made them- 
selves happy among the mountains there; with Paris, 
its perplexities, its problems, its passions out of sight 
and out of mind. 

If La Fayette flattered himself that his work was 
done, he was excusable. Had he not set about remov- 
ing the curse of despotism from France? The curse 
was off. But he might have known that the Revolution 
was too huge a movement by this time to cease its for- 
ward grind over the bones of men. Apparently he 
erred in some of his assumptions. Carried away with 
his own set belief in the adaptability of the British sys- 
tem to the Kingdom of France, he did not then realize, 
what soon became apparent to sympathetic observers, 
that the French people would speedily shake off the 
King and the Constitution and try untrodden and bloody 
ways toward unfettered democracy. 

And the King himself would be to blame in part; 
or rather the Queen would be to blame. About the time 
La Fayette left Paris, she wrote to her brother Leopold 
H, of Austria, urging him to invade France and restore 
the old order. That was in October, In November, at 
the suggestion of the Court, the Girondins put forward 
for the Mayoralty of Paris, Petion,'' an attorney's 
son — " cold as an extreme politician " — says Lamartine, 

^ Petion was one of the three commissioners sent by the 
National Assembly to meet runaway royalty on its return from 
Vergennes. The others were the Marquis de Latour Maubourg 
and young Barnave. At M. de Latour Maubourg's suggestion, 
Marie Antoinette invited the brilliant young, orator from 
Grenoble to sit between the King and herself. Later Barnave 
died for her. Petion left a journal of the ride with royalty. 
He sat between Madame Elizabeth (whose courtesy he, in his 
vanity, mistook for something else) and Madame Royal. This 
rneeting with Petion may have caused the Court to select 
him for the Mayoralty. Petion, a Judas, was a victim of the 
Terror. His body was found in a cornfield near Bordeaux, 
half eaten^ as by dogs or wolves. 

318 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

" rude as a parvenu/' La Fayette was supported by 
the Feuillants. And now was heard the voice of the 
Queen : *' La Fayette wishes to be Mayor of Paris, 
only in order to be, at the same time, Mayor of the 
palace." King, Queen and their adherents did all 
they could, through intrigues and solicitations, to de- 
feat the man who had saved them, and who stood for 
the only idea that could save the Constitutional crown 
in the future. 

With Mirabeau ^ in his grave, it was for them either 
La Fayette or ruin. Yet the Court, with incomprehen- 
sible blindness, supported Petion, ^ one of the most 
zealous of republicans. And Petion was chosen. We 
say " incomprehensible blindness." and, in one sense, 
it was so ; but the Court's non-reliance upon La Fay- 
ette, or, for that matter, on anyone else of French 
blood, explains a great deal. Louis and Marie Antoi- 
nette must have talked La Fayette to tatters. The 
Queen was " open and violent " in her hostility. At 
her dictation (December 3, 1791) Louis wrote to the 
King of Prussia. Emperor Leopold died March i, 
1792; and then the Tuileries made pleas to his son 
and successor, Francis II. The Comte d'Artois was 
expelled from Turin ; Calonne from Vienna; the activi- 
ties of the emigres increased — there were 22,000 under 
arms. Pitt was plotting, too. The pressure grew heav- 
ier and heavier; and, on the 20th of April, Louis, 

^ " When I am gone," said Mirabeau, speaking of the 
monarchy, " the factions will soon rend it in fragments." 

® " To me, it was exceedingly mortifying to find that 
such a man as Petion had supplanted La Fayette in the confi- 
dence of the majority of the populace, not only on his own 
account, but because it was evidence of a disposition to dis- 
parage early and devoted patriotism, and it exhibited a dispoi- 
sition incompatible with those principles on which the Con- 
titution was founded, or the existence of any permanent move- 
ment derived from the people could be based," — Thomas 
Waters Griffith, an American in Paris, 1791-1799. 

319 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

secretly appealing to Austria, openly declared war 
against her. 

But there was something else besides drum-beating ; 
though there was much of that, for all of France was 
astir. Men from Toulon, Brest, Marseilles, marched on 
Paris. It was the hour of Rouget de Lisle and La 
Marseillaise.^^ The crisis had come for King and 
Queen; and it was approaching for La Fayette, who, 
having been appointed to the command of one of the 
three frontier armies, was now at Sedan. 

Let us make the events that led up to this crisis 
foam along, since we are in such close approach to 
the cataract. What happened? 

Louis, on June 13, dismissed his liberal ministers. 

La Fayette, at Sedan, getting word of the dismissal, 
made up his mind to intervene. Accordingly, he wrote 
to the Assembly denouncing the Jacobin club, which was 
agitating against the foreign intrigues of the Crown. 

^^ Rouget de Lisle, a young officer of the engineer corps, 
attached to the fortress of Strasburg, was there at the moment 
when the National Assembly had just declared war against 
Austria, and when the boastings and threats of the exiles, 
assembled at Kehl, were making some impression upon the 
citizens and troops. The conversation turned to this matter 
one day at Marshal de Liickner's ; and Dietrich, the Mayor of 
Strasburg, a red-hot Revolutionist, after repeating that some 
means must be taken to rekindle the zeal of the soldiers and 
inhabitants, turned to Rouget de Lisle and said : " Come, young 
patriot — you are a poet and musician — make us a song that can 
be repeated on the march and in the barracks, in town and in 
country." Rouget de Lisle went home, took his violin and 
singing and playing together, composing air, words and accom- 
paniment, produced the " Marseillaise," which he wanted to 
call " The March of Liickner's Army." The song had a pro- 
digious success ; it was engraved as a supplement to the Stras- 
burg Journal. This was received by a subscriber at Mar- 
seilles, where it was at once reprinted and sung with fury by 
all its people, and it got its name from the fact that those 
terrible Marseillese brought it to Paris and sung it there. This 
story was told me by M. Rouget de Lisle himself . . . the last 
time I saw him he was almost a cripple and not long after I 
heard of his death. — " Baron Thiebault's Memoirs," vol. i, pp. 
109, no. 

320 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

The Jacobins knew of intrigues concerning which La 
Fayette was uninformed. The Assembly, on June i8, 
discussed La Fayette's letter ; approved it, and was on 
the point of ordering it to be printed when Gaudet 
of Bordeaux, Girondist, caused it to be referred to a 
committee. That night Robespierre roused the Jaco- 
bins. Here was a war worse than the war with the 
allied army. The King, at this time, vetoed the decree 
involving the deportation of non-juring priests. One 
would have supposed that with tithes abolished, church 
property to the value of hundreds of millions of livres 
confiscated, and a corresponding issue of assignats thus 
assured — one would have supposed this quite enough 
to satisfy the sensible reformers ; but it did not ; it was 
insisted that every priest should take the oath of fidelity 
to the Constitution. In doing so he must renounce 
Rome. He was to look to the state for his place and 
for his pay. He was to live, breathe and have his being 
in the state. Too much was asked in this; and the 
result was that the Constitution made countless enemies 
overnight. At the same time the King vetoed the decree 
providing for a great camp of Federes in proximity 
to Paris. 

In that capital on June 20, anniversary of the Oath 
of the Jeu-de-Paume, enormous mobs, singing fa ira, 
burst into the Tuileries. They stuck the bonnet rouge 
on the King's head. There was this method in their 
madness : they meant to terrorize the King so that he 
would reverse himself. 

In the King's Council, four years before, the Arch- 
bishop of Sens had spoken of La Fayette as peculiarly 
dangerous to the ministry " because his logic lay in 
actions." He acted now, but with deliberation. Just 
when and where the news of the terrorizing attempt 
reached him is not clear, as he was moving from point 
to point along his line of defense. But he did not 
21 321 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

reach Paris until the 28th of June. Then he appeared 
before the Assembly ; and urged it to curb the Jacobins. 
The orator Gaudet challenged his right to leave the 
army without permission, and a motion was made cen- 
suring him for his breach of discipline. But there 
were many deputies who only wanted such an oppor- 
tunity as this to align themselves against the rising 
radical elements ; so La Fayette escaped a vote of cen- 
sure, which might have been seized upon by the extre- 
mists as a vote of condemnation. Angry as was the 
general current, there was at this time a counter-current 
due largely to the drastic treatment of the clergy which 
had embittered a great number. La Fayette, says 
Hilaire Belloc, was *' applauded as he walked past the 
members, after his speech ; and it seemed for a moment 
as though his dramatic, but not theatrical, intervention 
had achieved something." ^^ 

That the test was warranted is proven by the fact 
that " 20,000 Parisians signed a petition expressing 
sympathy with Louis." It was La Fayette's last attempt 
to rally the Constitutionalists and tide the Crown over 
its difficulties. ** France is not yet a republic," said 
Danton ; " we can only establish a republic by intimida- 
tion." That was the foreword of the Terror. On the 
15th of July, the Jacobins, under the lead of Robes- 
pierre, petitioned the Assembly to arrest and try La 
Fayette; but the petition was refused. Then General 
Liickner was accused of conspiring with La Fayette — 
a charge that was speedily disproved. All was not 
going quite well with La Fayette's maligners, though 
they burnt him in effigy in the Palais Royal Garden on 

"At this juncture a new plan of escape was laid before 
Louis XVI, who, after accepting it one day, rejected it the 
next, and all that its proposer, M. de* Lafayette, gained by 
it was to be denounced once more before the Assembly as a 
traitor by the people who had idolized him. Failing to hang 
or assassinate him, thirty-eight years later they were adoring 
him again. — "Baron Thiebault's Memoirs," vol. i, p. no. 

322 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

the 27th. At the same time, M. d'Espremenil was 
seized, stripped and dipped in a public basin. Then, 
suddenly, the necessity for such petty horse-play ceased. 
Word reached Paris, July 28th, that the Duke of Bruns- 
wick, commanding-general of the Allied army, had 
issued a manifesto declaring Paris anathema to the 
Crowns of Europe. War fury arose. Dumouriez pro- 
posed to attack the Austrian Netherlands. " La Fay- 
ette wasito march against Namur, Biron against Mons, 
Dillon against Tournais. Soon Biron was beaten, 
and Dillon was put to rout, and likewise put to death." 

In Paris, on the 9th of August, a new Revolution- 
ary commune established itelf at the Hotel de Ville. 
It was self-constituted — a usurping junta. All night 
the tocsins sounded. Few slept. The air was soft, 
the sky gemmed with stars. The streets were thronged 
with moving masses of people. In the ferment were 
multitudes of the merely curious. 

At the Tuileries it was well understood that an 
outbreak was imminent. All who were in the palace 
kept vigil — King, Queen, soldiers, servants. The sol- 
diers were mainly Swiss ; and it must be said of them 
that they got ready to die without any undue palaver. 
So did some two hundred white-heads of the old blood. 
But, not long after Marie Antoinette, standing at her 
window, had watched the sun redden the east, Louis 
let himself be persuaded by Roederer ^^ to go seek 
sanctuary in the Assembly. Accordingly King and fol- 
lowers filed out of the palace, and passed in procession 
to the Assembly hall, where they were crowded into 

" Roederer said in his Chronique des Cinquante Jours: " If 
M. de La Fayette had had the will and the ability to make 
a bold stroke and seize the dictatorship, reserving the power 
to relinquish it after the establishment of order, one could 
comprehend his coming to the Assembly, with the sword of 
a dictator at his side, but to show it only, without resolving 
to draw it from its scabbard, was a fatal imprudence. In civil 
commotions, it will not answer to dare by half." 

323 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the " box of the logograph," otherwise the reporters' 
gallery. From this, as from a box at the play, King and 
Queen witnessed the drama of their own dethrone- 
ment/^ By and by cannon roared roundabout — the 
Swiss and the old nobles died, the palace was sacked. 
One of those who saw the whole assault — the massacre 
— exclaimed, apostrophizing Louis : " What, then, 
wretched man ! Have you no cannon to sweep out this 
rabble ? " It was Napoleon, standing among the spec- 
tators. From the Assembly, the King and his family 
were taken to the Temple — prisoners. The monarchy 
had fallen.i^ 

Five days later, Robespierre spoke before the 
National Assembly in behalf of the commune. He 
advocated a court of popular justice. He spoke of : 
" That Lafayette who was not in Paris ^'' but could 
be there," and asked *' if the guilty should escape 
national vengeance." 

La Fayette's friends were silent. They felt that he 
was proscribed.^*^ They saw that the deputies just 

^^ " I do not think anything more terrible can be imagined." 
says General Thiebault, "than those 500 madmen, three- 
quarters drunk, almost all in red caps, bare-armed and bare- 
chested, followed by the dregs of the people, incessantly rein- 
forced by the overflow of the Faubourgs of Saint Antoine 
and Saint Marceau, fraternizing from one public house to 
another with -bands no less dreadful than their own." 

" On the loth of August, says Imbert de Saint-Amand, 
AI. Maudat, La Fayette's successor as commander of the 
National Guard, was " massacred on the steps of the Hotel 
de Ville. A pistol brought him down ; pikes and sabres fin- 
ished him. His body was thrown into the Seine." " Maudat's 
death," says the Comte de Vaublanc, in his " Memoirs," " was, 
beyond any doubt, the chief cause of the calamities of the 
day." Petion betrayed Maudat. M. Mortimer Ternaux says : 
" On this fatal night when the passion of royalty was ful- 
filled, Petion doubled the parts of Judas and Pontius Pilate." 

'^The PubHc Prosecutor of the Terror," Antoine Quen- 
tin Fouquier-Tinville, from the French of Alphonse Dunoyer, 
by A. W. Evans, 1913. 

"Thomas Waters Griffith and Major Mountflorence, of 
the old North Carolina line, then in Paris, called on Gouverneur 
Morris and asked that he send them to La Fayette's camp for 

324 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

chosen were about to undo the work of the old deputies. 
*' The catastrophe of the loth of August," says Ber- 
trand Barere (Memoirs, Vol. II), "caused the over- 
throw of the National Assembly, and suddenly changed 
the destiny of the French people." 

" The greatest fear in the minds of Robespierre 
and his friends in the commune," says H. Morse 
Stephens,^^ " was that La Fayette would march on 
Paris." This was exactly what La Fayette intended 
to do. He had moved his headquarters to Sedan, where 
he was grandly entertained by the rich manufacturers, 
but where the Jacobin club was hotly opposed to him, 
and where the old nobility and, especially, M. de Vis- 
secq-Latude, an old royalist, whoi had refused to 
emigrate, openly insulted him. He heard of the cap- 
ture of the Tuileries on August 12th, and on the 13th 
he held a grand review at which he adjured his soldiers 
to swear fidelity to the King and to the nation. A few 
of the old regiments obeyed with enthusiasm, but the 
new regiments of volunteers were rnore doubtful, and 
one of the Maine et Loire shouted, *' To the nation — 
fidelity? — yes ; to the King? — No." This reception dis- 
concerted La Fayette, but nevertheless he caused the 
municipality of Sedan to arrest three deputies, sent on 
mission to the army — Kersaint, Antonelle and Peraldi, 
on August 14, and made the directory of the depart- 
ment of the Ardennes approve of his action. Yet he 
felt the people were not in sympathy with him, in spite 
of the obedience of the authorities, and he determined 
to appeal from his own corps d'armce to all the sol- 
service under the General. " He politely tendered us letters to 
him," says Griffith ("My Scrapbook of the Revolution," 
Latimer), "but advised us most earnestly to decline them for 
a few weeks, declaring, prophetically, that the Constitu- 
tion would be crushed and the Marquis overthrown with 
the King at the same time." Alarmed, the Americans did not 
go to camp. 

" " The French Revolution," vol. ii, pp. 136-139. 

325 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

diers under his command. To them he published a 
general order, telling them to rally like good citizens 
and brave soldiers 'round the standard — the standard 
they had sworn to defend to the death. To all his gen- 
erals of divisions, notably Arthur Dillon, who com- 
manded at Pont sur Sambre and Dumouriez, who com- 
manded the camp at Maulde, he sent his general order 
in the hope that they would join him. This news, as 
well as the intelligence of the arrest of the deputies of 
Sedan, soon reached the Assembly, and the municipal- 
ity of Paris immediately sent a deputation to demand 
that La Fayette should be arrested ; and on August 19, 
on motion of Jean Debry, Gilbert Motier de La Fay- 
ette, ci-devant General of the North, was formally 
declared guilty of the crimes of rebellion against the 
law, conspiracy against liberty and treason against the 
nation, and all authorities were ordered to lend their 
assistance in arresting him on pain of being considered 
accomplices of his rebellion. ^^ La Fayette found no help 
on any side when he turned to his soldiers. Dillon issued 
his order of the day, indeed ; but Liickner only grum- 
bled, and Dumouriez openly declared his adherence 
to the new state of things. On August 19th, La Fayette 
heard from his staff that his soldiers were themselves at 
issue, and that many of them openly declared that they 
would bind him hand and foot and send him off to the 

^ " This decree of accusation (says the "Memoirs," vol. 
iii, p. 384) was passed at the meeting of August 19th. Pur- 
suant to another decree, of the 25th, the property belonging to 
La Fayette and the other accused persons in the colonies was 
seized, to be put up for sale for the benefit of the public. On 
March 24th, 1792, the procurer of the commune, Manuel, de- 
manded the removal of the busts of La Fayette and Bailly 
from the Hotel de Ville. This proposition was rejected ; but, 
on the 25th of August, at the recommendation of the same 
person, another meeting of the commune decided that the 
die of the medal struck in honor of the first commander- 
in-chief of the National Guard should be broken by the 
public executioner." 

326 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

Assembly. He knew he was not popular in the army, 
and therefore, on August 20, accompanied by his staff, 
which included the ex-Constitutionalists Latour Mau- 
bourg, Bureaux de Pusy and Alexander de Lameth, 
he galloped quietly across the frontier into the 
Netherlands. 

On the 22d of August, Longwy fell, whereupon fury 
seized Paris. The September horror, from the 2d to 
the 5th, followed. On September 20th Valmy was 
won; on the 21st the first Republic was proclaimed. 
On November 8, Dumouriez won the Battle of Jem- 
mapes. There was now under way a succession of 
wars that would disturb Europe for twenty years. 

Once more the critics: The most notable study of 
La Fayette, as he was at the time of the fall of Louis 
XVI, is to be credited to Hilaire Belloc in his " High 
Lights of the French Revolution." He declares that 
" the life of La Fayette has for his fellow-countrymen, 
and for most students of European history, one supreme 
critical moment, which coincides with a supreme and 
critical moment in the story of our civilization. It 
was at that moment, in the afternoon of Sunday, the 
nineteenth of August, 1792, when he crossed the 
frontier and abandoned the defense of his own coun- 
try." He was in the vigor of his manhood — just thirty- 
five. In the Assembly of Notables he had found the 
enmity of many of his equals, " the friendship of a 
few ; the enthusiasm of none." He " found himself 
possessed of over-exaggerated popularity with the 
plebeian public outside, which was attached to his 
name and his story, not to his character." But let no 
one think him " lacking in that peculiar hunger for 
civic morality which distinguishes the masters of 
national fate from the statesman or the mere poli- 
tician." He had a firm faith in a certain and definite 
ideal. It was a faith so clear that it was capable of 

327 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

expression in a creed; and it remained his from early 
youth till death. To use Belloc's own words : 

" Unfortunately for him, his creed was a creed 
peculiarly unacceptable to the French people. It con- 
sisted largely of negative articles — the exact toleration 
of all religion that did not offend the current morality 
of his time, an attitude which he and many others mis- 
took for a complete scheme of toleration; it proposed 
an acceptation of popular sovereignty, but a popular 
sovereignty which La Fayette, quite unlike the French, 
believed could be accurately expressed by a repre- 
sentative system. This creed acquiesced in a limita- 
tion of civic activity and responsibility to those citizens 
who happened to be possessed of property, and no doc- 
trine is more odious to catholic Europe ; finally, La Fay- 
ette's creed was summed up in a curiously passionate 
attachment to the letter of organic laws, or, as men 
put that foible in English, ' a respect for the 
Constitution. * " 

He had a passion for a Constitution. ** He had in 
his feeling for it something of religion; indeed, it 
was in part the absence of other religion from his 
character which must account for so singular and so 
unnational an intellectual weakness." He wanted an 
Assembly, an executive responsible to it, and an inde- 
pendent judicature. 

The New Regime took shape under his direction. 
He was the " head and designer " of the National 
Guard. This was not only an indispensable adjunct to 
the first plan of the Revolution, but was, " on the 
material side the instrument of it." Had " the Revo- 
lution reached its term in the Constitution of 1791, and 
had war with Europe been avoided, the National Guard 
of Paris would easily be apparent as the chief factor 
in that achievement ; and La! Fayette made it." The 
National Guard and its leader saved the monarchy in 
1789; and in 1790 as in early 1791, "it and he were 
physically masters of Paris." *' Had La Fayette loathed 

328 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

as the King loathed, the reHgious quarrel," the out- 
come might have been different ; " but to La Fayette 
the religious policy of the Assembly seemed the most 
natural of things." Toward the end of his life " it was 
the gospel, not the church, of which he spoke." The 
King's escape made La Fayette '' a suspect in the 
eyes of Revolutionary Paris ; his activity in capturing 
the King and Queen made him odious to all the grow- 
ing opinion in Europe and in France which had ceased 
to see in the Revolution a political experiment and had 
begun to see in it only a drama — a tragedy, the pitiful 
victims of which were Louis and the royal family." 

But La Fayette saw the Assembly give France its 
Constitution — which, indeed, " seemed oddly color- 
less as it stood contrasted against that great dark cloud 
of history which was rising upon the sky ; " and to him 
it was " a perfected ideal." But it was the fate of 
that strict character to effect nothing at all in all his 
long and sterile life. 

In his " French Revolution," the same critic sums 
up thus : 

" The character of La Fayette has suffered chiefly 
from his own aloofness towards his contemporaries on 
the one hand and from his rigid adherence to prin- 
ciple upon the other. Both these causes are clearly 
connected. The same quality in him which made him 
so tenacious of principle, made him contemptuous of 
the run of men about him. Fundamentally he was 
nearer the extreme republicans than any other class, 
from the very fact of his possessing a clear political 
creed and a determination to follow it out to its logical 
consequence. But there was no chance of his compre- 
hending the concrete side of the movement or the men 
engaged upon it, for his great wealth, inherited in very 
early life, had cut him off from experience. His moral 
fault was undoubtedly ambition. It was an ambition 
which worked in the void, as it were, and never meas- 
ured itself with other men's capacities or opportunities." 

329 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

When in America he did not rub up hard against 
his fellow-men because *' there was no proletariat in the 
colonies " ; " he never saw or comprehended the dispos- 
sessed classes of Paris; for that matter, he never 
saw or comprehended the French peasantry ^^ on his 
own land." 

** It may be said of La Fayette with justice that he 
never upon a single occasion did the right thing, it 
may also be said with justice that he never did politi- 
cally any major thing for which his own conscience 
would later reproach him. ... In religion the man 
was anodyne. Catholic, of course, by baptism, but 
distinctly protestant in morals and in general tone 
in dogma (until the end of his life) free-thinking, of 
course, like all his contemporaries." 

Mr. Belloc has an adroit way about him. If he had 
marked out for himself the difficult task of summoning 
back a tiny bit of anti-La Fayette musk from Marie 
Antoinette's jar of antipathies, or a suggestion of 
clerical snuff from Louis' own golden box, he could 
not have succeeded better than he has in powdering 
his subject with delicate aspersions. In general, he 
gives La Fayette his due, and quite skillfully. Then, 
he selects and suddenly uses the most belittling of 
words — words that fasten the attention because of the 
shock they bring and that linger in the mind long after 
the qualifying matter has faded out. As if respect for 
the Constitution could be a " foible." " His long and 
sterile life " — as if one could accept " sterile " as 
descriptive of a life so fertile and fruitful for man- 
kind in the mass. Somewhere he speaks of La Fayette 
as a " ninny." By the same token, of course, Wash- 

^* During his French mission Thomas Jefferson wrote to 
La Fayette from Nice : " You must ferret the people out of 
their hovels as I have done ; look into their kettles, eat their 
bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself 
but in fact to find if they are soft." — " Thomas Jefferson," by 
David Muzzey, p. 121. 

330 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

ington, Patrick Henry, Bolivar, Garibaldi — all the liber- 
ators — were ninnies. La Fayette himself admitted 
that he could never induce France to do what he 
wished her to do. He had his defeats rather than vic- 
tories — his disappointments and his humiliations; yet 
the world, in the long run, approved of him and vindi- 
cated him. It all depends upon how appreciatively 
we estimate the services of an ardent well-wisher of 
France, and of mankind, in setting afoot, or helping to 
set afoot, a grand plan to rescue some 25,000,000 people 
from the evils of misgovernment under an increasingly 
heavy despotism. If that means no more to us than 
some inconsequential court matter, or personal short- 
coming, or unlikable characteristic, then to be sure we 
find little to excite ourselves about. In appraising 
La Fayette it is of slight consequence whether Marie 
Antoinette threw keys or kisses at him ; it is of immense 
consequence that a young Frenchman of the blood, 
rich, happy at home, should risk his fortune, his fame, 
his neck, in a prolonged combat for the oppressed. Lose 
sight of this and all is lost. But it cannot be lost sight 
of. The bigness of his purpose makes La Fayette per- 
petually big. If he be called a stoic or creature of 
creed, unduly appreciative of representative govern- 
ment — and what other kind a democracy may have, 
heaven only knows — no one will consider him greatly 
abused. Finally, it is rather sweeping to say of La 
Fayette that " he never upon a single occasion did the 
right thing." It would be just as true, and much less 
offensive to the gods, to assert that never upon a single 
occasion did he do the wrong thing.-*^ 

** It is significant that Aulard does not indict La Fayette. 
Aulard's contention, backed up by the documents, is that there 
was no_ republican party in France until after 1789. Then the 
increasing power of the bourgeoisie, which threatened to be- 
come a privileged class, provoked a conflict between this middle 
class and the people. Socialistic ideas got abroad. Nothing 

331 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Did he do the wrong thing in this personal crisis on 
the nineteenth of August? He had done his best for 
France, and then had gone home. He had seen emerge, 
as from a sewer communicating with the Stygian 
depths, a reptiHan mob ; and he had f eh its fangs. He 
knew the thing was there — still there in Paris. He 
had been called to command an insubordinate army 
infected with the same ideas that had caused Dillon's 
defeat and death. He felt himself in honor bound 
to sustain the King, and the King had just been 
uncrowned.-^ He could not be a turncoat over night, 
or a turncoat at all ; he could not lead an army in 
behalf of a usurping government which had repudiated 
him and which was sure to send him to the guillotine 
if it could get its bloody hands upon him, either as a 
victor or as a loser in some frontier fight. His was 
the torment at that trying time. He was like Ney in 
the Hundred Days. He was driven this way; he was 
driven that.-- He could not trust Paris; he tried the 
government of Ardennes, and that government failed to 

helped republicanism so much as the King's treason. La Fay- 
ette's period of activity was that of the constitutional monarchy 
sustained by a property-owners' suffrage. From 1792 to 1795 
was the period of the Democratic Republic; from 1795 to 1799 
was the period of the Bourgeois Republic; from 1799 to 1809 
was the period of the Plebiscitary Republic." La Fayette 
made much of American republicanism ; wore as his emblem 
on his American uniform " a tree of liberty planted above a 
crown and a broken sceptre," but in France was a monarchist. 
" The fact is even such Frenchmen as were most deeply infected 
with Americanism saw plainly enough the difference between 
the two countries." 

^ " In this horrible disorder of men's minds, M. de La 
Lafayette, who commanded a French army on the frontier, 
could not make up his mind to defend a state of things every 
day more contrary to his presumptuous hopes and he secretly 
left his command to escape to America." — M. Guizot, " His- 
tory of England," vol. iii, p. 416. 

^^ The English historian White speaks of La Fayette as 
a " true gentleman, whose talent was not equal to his heart," 
adding : "As the republicans at home had denounced him 
as a royalist, the Emperor (of Austria) and the refugees 
denounced him as a republican." 

332 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

sustain him. He had no right to hold an army inactive 
when, with another leader, it might strike the Allied 
enemy. There was one course to take. By a strange 
and most unheartening concatenation of Revolutionary 
events, he was thrust out of France. He would go — 
to America, land of wide horizons. The future, 
too, had its wide stretches. France w^ould have her 
future ; and a Fabius might help her. At Valley 
Forge La Fayette had talked of old Fabius, had seen 
a new Fabius. Flis friends were in America ; his hope 
was in the future."^ 

As La Fayette is now out of the Revolution, we 
are likewise. But we may be permitted a few para- 
graphs in which to catch up loose ends. Especially 
will these paragraphs make for coherence, and enable 
us to understand the difficulties of Madame de La Fay- 
ette and the tragic experiences of her grandmother, 
mother and sister. 

A human storm arose in Paris when news -came of 
the fall of Longwy and the threatened fall of Verdun. 
In the heat of their excitement, leaders and populace 
imagined Brunswick's troops already at the barriers. 

Danton was in a rage. Some historians exculpate 
him for what happened in the way of horror ; and lay 
the crime upon Marat; but it is a fact that Danton 
was Minister of Justice, and it is a further fact that, 
on the 28th of August, he obtained from the Commune 
its authorization of " domiciliary visits." In other 
vv^ords, he sent his spies and agents into all kinds of 
homes, put all kinds of people under arrest, and arbi- 
trarily thrust them into prison. It was the despot's 

^^ There are two La Fayettes. The La Fayette of 1789 
was the idol of Frenchmen ... he of 1792 was proscribed 
by public opinion. . . . The prisons of Olmutz confined another 
La Fayette to that of the camp at Sedan. . . . His conduct 
when in irons was heroic — his conduct at the head of the army 
was anti-natural. — "Memoirs of Barere," vol. iv, p. 231. 

333 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

letfre de cachet, in another and even more remorseless 
and atrocious form. Paris had other masterful men 
(in the sinister sense), but Danton was for a brief 
space the most masterful of all. If he did not order 
the massacres that followed during four days (Sep- 
tember 2-5) he knew them to be going on and did 
not stop them.-'* But historians are contentious and 
excusatory. They pick out their favorites, and because 
Danton was big of intellect, square-faced, square-jawed, 
leonine, with the quality of thunder in his voice, some 
of them see in him a picturesque figure who loved his 
wife and who at worst groaned forth his assent to the 
acts of the wicked wights about him. But men who 
love their own wives and turn the wives of others 
over to butchery are of a type to execrate rather than 
make excuses for."^ 

It was he who ordered the tocsin rung on the 2d of 
September. The streets filled. Then those who had 
been herded into prisons ^^ were brought out, put 

^* A few days before the horrible massacres of September, 
Danton had sent an assignat of about ;£ioo nominal value to the 
sexton of St. Sulpice, with instructions to prepare at once an 
enormous fosse, or excavation, at Montrouge in order to bury 
the intended victims. And they were shortly afterwards 
brought there — ten cartloads of them. — " The Storm and Its 
Portents," by Dr. T. L. Phipson. 

^ French historians find Danton a favorite theme. His 
chief apologist is Dr. Robinet^ — " Danton, Memoire sur sa vie 
privee," " Le Proces des Dantonistes" ; " Danton, homme 
d'Etat." " In these works the accusations of venality and 
cruelty so often brought against Danton are excellently re- 
futed, but the method of apology is too systematic." Aulard 
sums up : " Danton's policy is precisely what in our days is 
known as ' opportunism,' if that word be understood in its 
favorable sense. Danton springs from Mirabeau, as Gambetta 
proceeds from Danton." 

^^ The prisons were L'Abbaye, La Force, La Conciergerie, 
the Bernardins, Saint Fermain, La Saltpetriere and Bicetre. 
" If it was at the Abbaye," says Dr. T. L. Phipson, in " The 
Storm' and Its Portents," " the victim was led to death on the 
outside, on the president exclaiming, ' Conduct this man to 
La Force,' or if it was at La Force, the term used was ' Take 
him to the Abbaye.' He was then led out and massacred." 

334 



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Augustine Rischgitz 



PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE 
From the portrait by Rioult at Versailles 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

through mock hearings of the hollowest sort,-^ and 
thrust into the hands of a waiting mob of butchers. 
The scenes at La Force were scenes of horror. The 
scenes at I'Abbaye were of Hke hellishness. Words 
are pale and put no splash of ineffaceableness into the 
pictures we must paint. One of the most monstrous 
of the murders was that of the Princess de Lamballe.^* 
But there were between two thousand and three thous- 
and of the murders ; and the victims were, for the most 
part, innocent, if not worthy, souls, undeserving of 
molestation or punishment, much less slaughter. Those 
in power happened to have a monomania on the subject 
of the invasion of France. " The foe is coming, let us 
be ferocious." Instead of seizing their guns and 
marching out to drive off the invaders, they hit upon 
the most Satanic of devices — organized terror. This 
Reign of Terror lasted until the 27th of July, 1794 
(9th Thermidor). First, Danton was despot; then 
Robespierre ; then some one else — some set of terror- 
ists, some such trio as Collot d'Herbois, Billaud- 
Varennes and Bertrand Barere. 

Goethe, who happened to see Brunswick's defeat 
at Valmy, said that he had just witnessed a new era 
opening for Europe. On the next day (September 21) 
the Monarchy went by the board. 

^'' Many had " hair-breadth escapes." How Marat ma- 
liciously tripped Beaumarchais (who, however, got off) is told 
in " The Reign of Terror," vol. i. In the same volume appears 
" My Agony of Thirty-eight Hours." by M. de Jourgniac St. 
Meard, ci-devant captain commandant of chasseurs ; it has the 
stamp of exact truth ; tells the tale of the Abbaye St. Germain, 
and thrills one to this day. 

"^ Louise de Savoie, Princess de Lamballe, born at Turin, 
September 8, 1749; married the Prince de Lamballe, only 
son of the Due de Penthievre — a widow at 19; intendante 
in the household of Marie Antoinette; escaped to England at 
the time of the Varennes flight, but returned when she heard 
of the capture of the King and Queen, of whom she wrote: 
" Her eyes were sunk deep in their sockets ; her hair was white, 
her spirits were broken, and sleep seemed to have for- 
saken her." 

335 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

The Legislative Assembly (i 791 -1792) had now 
given way to the Convention (1792-1794), which was 
succeeded by the Directory (October, 1795-November, 
1799), which was followed by the Consulate (Novem- 
ber, 1795-May, 1804), and, in the course of time, 
by Napoleon. 

Louis XVI, says the royalist Mallet du Pan, 
" restored to France her National Assemblies. The 
first of these Assemblies deprived him of his authority, 
the second of his liberty, and the third of his life." But 
the " feeble-forcible " Louis had a great deal of help 
in making his numerous mistakes. Chief among his 
helpers was Marie Antoinette. 

Hilaire Belloc (" The French Revolution ") has 
this to say : 

" There was no character in touch with the Execu- 
tive during the first years of the Revolution comparable 
to hers for fixity of purpose and definition of view. 
It was due to this energy and singleness of aim that 
her misunderstanding of the material with which she 
had to deal was of such fatal importance. It was she 
who chose, before the outbreak of the Revolution, the 
succession of ministers, both Liberal and Reactionary, 
whose unwise plans upon either side precipitated vio- 
lence. It was she who called and then revoked and 
later recalled to office the wealthy and over-estimated 
Necker ; she who substituted for him, and then so inop- 
portunely threw over Calonne, the most National of 
the precursors of the Revolution, and ever after her 
most bitter enemy; it was she who advised the more 
particularly irritating details of resistance after the 
meeting of the first Revolutionary Parliament ; it was 
she who presided over (and helped to warp) the plans 
for the flight of the royal family ; it was she who after 
this flight had failed, framed a definite scheme for the 
coercion of the French people by the Governments 
of Europe. It was she who betrayed the French plan 
of campaign when war had become inevitable; finally 
it was she who inspired the declaration of Brunswick 
which accompanied the invasion of French territory, 

336 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

and she was in particular the author of the famous 
threat therein contained to give over Paris to military 
execution and to hold all the popular authorities respon- 
sible with their lives for the restoration of the pre- 
revolutionary state of affairs." 

Marie Antoinette, with her children, and Madame 
Elizabeth, were now with the King in the Temple prison. 
They had few friends in the new Convention. Here sat 
the Mountain — 50 Jacobins, Danton, Robespierre, St. 
Just, Tallien, Carnot, Fouchet. Next was the Plaine, 
numerically notable. Over against the Mountain were 
the Girondins. One of these was Condorcet; another 
Roland. Mme. Roland, too, was a power.-^ She was 
ambitious enough to be an altruistic Lady Macbeth — 
and what a swath her Shakespearean ladyship might 
have cut in Paris during the Dantonian period ! Many 
who were making history had not read history. They 
were ignorant. Not a buoy, not a beacon came to 
minds disdainful of guidance and clouded by insane 
egotism. But it was different with this idealist, " the 
Egeria of the Girondins," who, however, in her par- 
tisan implacability hardened herself towards one to 
whom she should have been merciful — Marie Antoi- 
nette, in the Temple, shorn of power, of the adjuncts of 
queenliness, of hope, of her very children. Pity is pity, 
and a blessed thing. There was much of it in Paris 
and throughout France in those days ; and the sacrifices 
made .were enough to touch even the hearts of the 
hardened ones. The Roland tale is pathetic. At the 
Federation of Lyons, May 30th, 1790, husband and 

®At Fontenay-aux-roses (village) Condorcet [after the 
downfall of the Girondins], disguised as a livery servant, 
driven by hunger and fatigue, ventured into a cabaret. While 
waiting for an omelette, he drew out of his pocket a copy of 
Horace. Those who saw him reading at once suspected him 
to be a man of consequence, and his arrest followed. Later 
he took poison and died in a ditch on the road from Fontenay 
to Paris. — " France," by Lady Morgan, vol. i, p. 49. 

22 ^ 337 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

wife had dreamed dreams of a glorified France. Tens 
of thousands on the beautiful quay of the Rhone felt 
thrills of joy at thoughts of liberty come down on earth 
at last. " Our souls conceived the sweetest hopes," 
said Mme. Roland. " We beheld in the Revolution 
nothing but the end of abuses and the encouragement of 
talents and virtues ; we thought that France was going 
to be helped by none but friends ; that she would become 
the abode of industry and commerce ; that the sciences 
and the fine arts would there establish their empire. 
We abandoned ourselves to these sweet ideas ; and they 
were, I may say it, in the heart of the majority of 
the French. ^^ 

Now she was urging the young orator, Lou vet, into 
battle against Robespierre. The Girondins were seeking 
to save the King. Malesherbes defended him before 
the Convention ; but Barere demanded his death on 
the score of public safety. Three days after Barere's 
speech' Dumouriez arrived in Paris. ^^ As La Fayette 
had a few months before, so did Dumouriez now, 
appear to be the man of the sword so dreaded by 
Robespierre, the successful soldier, " ready to convert 
the Revolution to his own profit, or if not to his own to 
that of his party, the Girondins." But Louis was doomed. 
Clad in white, he was carted to his death through 
crowded streets and climbed the scafifold in the Place 
de la Concorde. It was January 21st, 1793. Drums 
set up a thunderous roll when he tried to speak. It 
must be said that all his later acts were those of a fine- 
mannered, kind-hearted man. He died like a gentle- 
man — L. Capet, by name; and the head that rolled 
in the basket was never troubled more. 

" The coalized Kings of Europe threaten us," roared 

'" L. H. Champagnex : Roland MS. 

'' " The French Revolution," by R. M. Johnston. 

338 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

Danton. " We hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the 
head of a King." "- 

Danton tried to win over the Girondins, but failed. 
Troubles multiplied. The Vendee was rising. The 
Jacobin Committee of Public Safety was formed. The 
Rolands were in despair. M. Roland "''' resigned from 
the ministry, February 19, 1793. He tells why: 

" The daring Danton had held the helm of the 
vessel ; he had thrown her into the tempestuous sea of 
the most horrible passions. He still steered her by 
his stentorial voice, his rough and athletic make, and 
his frightful menaces. He was continually at the heels 
of the ministers, thrusting on them his dependents, and 
forcing them to provide for them. ... It was 
nothing but propositions ex abritpto, interlarded with 
cries, with oaths, with goings and comings of the mem- 
bers themselves. . . . Danton made propositions, 
decrees, proclamations, commissions. He disposed of 
several millions. I ask, in such a situation, thus sur- 
rounded, in the horrible state of restraint in which we 
were, in the midst of the bowlings of rage, of provo- 
cations to murder and pillage; hearing continually 
rehearsed those bloody scenes, full of horror; hearing 
them praised with atrocity and the renewal of them 
solicited with fury . . . seeing the national repre- 
sentation degraded, the laws trampled under foot, all 
the constituted authorities consigned to the greatest con- 
tempt, hordes of robbers raising a throne on the bodies 
of their victims, thence extending their dominion over 
all France and wishing to force the people everywhere 
to imitate them. ... I ask what was I to do? 
. . . Everything was possible, everything was easy, 
everything would have gone right but for the audacious- 

^^ Danton did not allow for the fiery flare-back. Louis 
let alone was harmless. Louis beheaded brought down on 
France legion upon legion. England cut her purse-strings. 

'^^ When M. Roland first appeared at court the leaders 
there were scandalized by his dress. One of them, says Mme. 
Roland, stepping up to Dumouriez with horror depicted upon 
his countenance, whispered, with a look that indicated conster- 
nation, " Afonsieur, point de boiiches a sei souliers" ("Sir, 
there are no buckles on those shoes"). 

339 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ness of the Dantons, the Robespierres, the Marats, or 
rather but for the weakness of the Convention, which 
was not able to redress them." 

On June 2d, thirty Girondins were arrested. Alto- 
gether 180 of them were *' imprisoned, dispersed or 
guillotined." Madame Roland rode to her death in the 
tumbril. He whose name and fame she perpetuated 
died by his own hand.^* 

It was no new thing — this death by the dripping 
axe. There was a death-machine of the guillotine type 
in England in the days of " Good Queen Bess." It was 
called the Maiden. Twenty-five criminals were thus 
beheaded at Halifax in her reign. La Louison had 
been the name of such a device at Lille, but Dr. Guillotin 
had introduced it in Paris, his purpose being humane. 
The gods mocked him, sad to say. " Windows were 
filled with ladies in the houses round the Place de 
Greve." ^^ It took a minute all told from the ascent 
of the victim upon the scaffold to the descent of the axe. 

Multitudes, in France and out, realized by this time 
that an extraordinary monstrosity in the way of gov- 
ernment had developed in Paris. And there was a 
marvellous thing about it. Those who did the condemn- 
ing to-day would themselves be condemned to-morrow. 
The massacre and the guillotine formed a combination 
more profoundly cruel than Moloch himself. Here 
was a mobocracy with perverse and insane inquisi- 
torial impulses. The tyrant, with his crown and his 
lettres de cachet, was out; in his place sat enthroned 
a many-headed monster whose nod was death. 

To be rid of a debt, the trick was to bring S-bout 
the decapitation of the creditor. To be rid of a rival 

^* M. Roland thus saved his daughter's inheritance. It 
would have been confiscated if he had suffered on the scaffold. 
She married a son of M. Champagneux and lived till 1858. She 
willed her mother's Memoirs to France. 

^' " A Trip to Paris," by Mr. Twiss. 

340 




"LES FURIES DE GUILLOTINE" 

Designed by M. H. Baron; engraved on steel by M. L. Massard;from 
"Les Francais sous la Revolution," by Challamel et Tenint 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

in love, in trade, in politics, in art, in music, in litera- 
ture, the recipe was to whisper lies into Madame 
Guillotine's ear. 

These were but abuses, of course. In truth, many 
of the most lamentable crimes of Danton's period of 
power were committed by men who ordinarily would 
have been able to retain their self-respect, but who, 
half-crazed in the fury of the times, participated in 
the " judicial assassinations." 

** The Revolution, like Saturn, devoured its own 
children. Those who set up the guillotine perished 
by the guillotine." Marat escaped it. He was in his 
bath writing, July 13th, 1793, when Charlotte Corday 
from Caen, whither so many Girondists had fled, 
stabbed him to death. Oval-faced, blue-eyed, brown- 
haired, with well-shaped (though large) features, and 
with arms and hands to delight a sculptor, this young 
zealot — Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, 
grand-niece of Corneille — told Fouquier-Tinville : " I 
did not feel I was going to kill a man but a wild beast 
who was devouring France." 

This Fouquier-Tinville, public prosecutor at the 
Revolutionary Tribunal, who had fed the guillotine 
with hundreds of worthy men and women, himself 
finally felt the kiss of sharpened steel. So perished 
good and bad : Danton, seized in his bed and thunder- 
ing forth protests, went to his death July 13, 1793; 
and in the same hour perished Camille Desmoulins, 
Fabre d'Eglantine and Herault de Sechelle. 

At last the Jacobins were all-powerful. They con- 
trolled the Convention which controlled the Committee 
of Public Safety. Robespierre, " The Little Cat," and 
Camot enforced their will upon the seven other mem- 
bers of this committee. Carnot in August made a 
levee en masse ; and France was converted into a vast 
camp. When news of victory came from the battle- 

341 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

fields of the Republic, there were fewer arrests; but 
bad news from the front intensified the ferocity of the 
mobs and the men in power. The Law of the Maxi- 
mum fixed the price of bread. The Law of Suspects 
expedited the work of the Revolutionary Tribunal — a 
court from which there was no appeal. Terrorism had 
been lawless and rebellious ; it ended by becoming legal 
and official. ^*^ Every day batches (fournees) were sent 
to the axe. On the i6th of October, Marie Antoinette, 
gray and with the stamp of woe upon her, rode in the 
death-cart, her hands tied behind her. She died 
unflinchingly. Robespierre's guillotine also cut life's 
thread for the Duke of Orleans, Bailly, Malesherbes 
and Du Barri. 

But the Jacobins now began to rend each other. 
The Hebertists, who tried to do away with religion and 
enthrone paganism, went under the axe on March 24, 
1794; and the Dantonists on the 8th of April. On 
June 8th was the Fete de I'etre Supreme; and there 
was talk between St. Just and Robespierre of the 
establishment of " an ideal state." It was not ideal 
now, they thought; the Revolutionary Tribunal was 
not working as fast as it ought. It had sent but 1200 
to the guillotine; it must do better. In the next six 
weeks — June loth, July 27th — it gave 1400 heads to 
the basket. 

One day the cry arose in the Convention : " Down 

^^ The Reign of Terror was also the Reign of the Law. 
Every scoundrel who sat around the green table in the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety and agreed to the daily list of victims 
was as amply invested with legal authority as any grand 
juryman who brings in a "true bill" at our English assizes. 
The scaffold reeked, but the women — who came every day to 
see Madame Guillotine fed — could at least say that from the 
cutting of the hair of the victims to the removal of their bodies 
and the baskets containing their heads the whole_ proceeding 
was strictly legal and sanctioned besides by universal suf- 
frage. — " Review of the Life of Mme. de La Fayette," in Black- 
wood's, cxii, September, 1872. 

3\^ 




"L'INCROYABLE ET LA MERVEILLEUSE" 

"Young bloods" as depicted by Fragonard. The fop with the fob and 
extraordinary get-up is rather more astonishing than his partner; but the 
faddish ladies in those days gilded their toe-nails beautifully. The Incroy- 
ables, "Dandies," gave Victims' Balls "to which," says Aulard, "no one was 
admitted unless some relative had been guillotined. They wore their hair 
a la victime, and carried great cudgels with which they beat the Jacobins in 
the theatre, in the cafe, in the street." The engraving is by M. L. Massard, 
and is from "Les Francais sous la Revolution, Par MM. Augustin Challamel 
et Wilhelm Tenint. Paris. 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

with the Tyrant ! " When he attempted to defend him- 
self, Robespierre was howled down. He was outlawed. 
In a mob-clash, his jaw was broken by a pistol shot. 
All night he sat in misery — dethroned. On the 28th oi 
July he took the kiss, with St. Just, Henriot and a 
score more. Next day 71 members of the Commune 
were beheaded. 

This was the end of the Reign of Terror. It was 
Billaud and CoUot d'Herbois who had brought about 
the coup d'etat. In fifteen months there had been 
17,000 executions in France. On the lists, when the 
Terror ended, were the names of i30,ocx) emigres. 

Great was the reaction. A band called '' la Jeunesse 
Doree " attacked the Jacobins. Billaud and Collot lost 
their hold. Collot, who had been a comedian before he 
played in this greatest of tragedies, was transported to 
Cayenne, where he spent his time breeding parrots ; 
but it is not down in the books as to whether or no he 
taught the parrots to shriek : " Death ! Death ! " 

Others were transported to Cayenne — among them 
one of La Fayette's aides, that extraordinary " charac- 
ter," Dossonville. 

G. Lenotre, in *' Romances of the French Revo- 
lution," expresses his admiration of Dossonville, " who 
had seen everything, done everything, exhausted every- 
thing," and " whose name has not even been retained 
by history." At that time " there were pedantic 
Figaros, like Fabre d'Eglantine, and tragic Figaros, 
like Collot d'Herbois " ; but the truest to the type was 
Dossonville. M. Lenotre continues : 

** Son of I know not whom, and, in conformity with 
tradition valet to a great lord, Dossonville, spent the 
first twenty-five years of his life in the service of 
President Salaberry. Quick-witted, handsome, active, 
insidious, ever in a good humor, giving up the present 
entirely to pleasure and troubling himself as little over 

343 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the future as about the past, he one day threw off 
his Hvery and confiding in his good fortune, launched 
out in the world. He recognized in himself but one 
weakness ... an enormous appetite. Alternately 
a clerk, a petition writer, half an author, and for a 
short time a faro banker, he kept, in 1789, at the Cour 
des Miracles, a well-frequented cafe, where the wits 
and politicians of the quarter often met to read the 
newspapers or to play at cards. . . . Made a lieu- 
tenant in the National Guards, he was seen at reviews 
in short jacket, and leather breeches, galloping by the 
side of La Fayette, and shouting: * Vive notre Saii- 
veur! Vive notre brave General! ' ^^ A year later 
he was an officer of the peace ; no longer a * Fayettiste,' 
but on the side of the Court. Or rather he belonged 
to both camps ; for, like his model, the illustrious barber, 
what he loved above ' all things was ' two, three, four 
intrigues at a time, well interwoven one with the other.' 
He became one of the intimates at the Tuileries, con- 
versed with Louis XVI alone, and captivated him, and 
was intrusted with a secret mission in England. He 
remained there three months, returned at the time of 
danger, and on August loth was among the defenders 
of the chateau. On the following day he was arrested 
and brought up for trial with his accomplice, Collenot 
d'Angremont, who was guillotined. . . . He him- 
self was imprisoned in the Abbaye, but the place being 
unsafe, he made a great to-do, and succeeded in get- 
ting out of prison on September ist, a few hours before 
the commencement of the massacre. Thus, in less 
than a fortnight, did Dossonville escape from the heads- 
man, Sanson, and the hard-hitting Maillard. 

'' It had been a close shave. But, in faith, he was 
well able to look after himself. On finding himself in 
the street an entire section of society had been swept 
away and Dossonville, who was astonished at noth- 
ing, was at ease from the very first day. . . . He 
was now a detective. . . . He carried no other de- 
fensive weapon than a slender switch, with which he 
lashed the air as he walked along. . . . He 

" Statement of Citizen Villain, Archives Nationalcs, 
F. 4680. 

344 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

was authorized to proceed against * all enemies of the 
public happiness ' ; and he could not be ' imprisoned 
under any pretext whatever.' " 

Thus Dossonville passed through the Terror. " He 
had established himself as purveyor to the guillotine 
with the sole object of rendering service to suspicious 
persons whom he hunted down." Frequently he saved 
lives — so he said — without letting their owners know 
they had been in danger. He feared " their indiscreet 
gratitude." In other words, this fine fellow, who 
employed as his assistants an ex-convict and an 
unfrocked monk, double-crossed such dabsters as Dan- 
ton and Robespierre — all out of the goodness of his 
heart. Why kill people ? Why not go eat ? — and espe- 
cially drink? 

"As a matter of fact," adds M. Lenotre, "many men 
owed their lives to him. He knew so well how to put 
things into a tangle, mislay documents, and prolong 
the most simple inquiries." He was a good angel in 
disguise; also he had a good angel who looked after 
him. He was denounced and probably would have been 
guillotined by Robespierre, but just then Robespierre 
was guillotined ! Dossonville juggled himself out of 
harm's way into Talaru's prison, where rich suspects 
paid enormous sums to be well hidden and well fed. 
Dossonville liked it, but Fructidor came, and he was 
placed in an iron cage with some 6o-odd other celebri- 
ties and trundled to Rochefort, where all took ship 
for French Guiana. On the voyage he nearly starved 
and nearly killed himself by eating six pounds of 
shark at one meal. At Cayenne he plotted a break 
for liberty. He hurled a sentry from the ramparts, 
made off with some others in a pirogue, and at last 
reached Europe. The fact that he had to go f oodless 
one whole week was his " greatest trial " — " the thought 
of which even twenty years afterwards made perspira- 

345 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

tion break out on his forehead." Like La Fayette, 
Dossonville got into Olmutz. Finally as a police com- 
missary in Paris, under the Restoration, when he would 
hear a case in which there was a great to-do over some 
such affair as the breaking of a flower-pot. Monsieur 
Dossonville would calm the disputants with a smile 
which seemed to signify: '' This is not the first quarrel 
I have seen." Really, concludes M. Lenotre, Dosson- 
ville, who died a poor man, " committed only one crime 
— that of neglecting to write his memoirs," 

This is a lighter thread, running through the dark 
woof of the Terror. Essentially, as all know, it was 
tragic ; relieved, in the main, by the beautiful spirit of 
exaltation to which Louis Blanc and Michelet refer. 
This spirit possessed multitudes of the victims of the 
Terror. The innocent, the devout, died with much 
more dignity than those whom guilt made cowards 
or bravados. And, most of all, it was the devout 
who perished with grace. 

At this time Madame de La Fayette was in 
Auvergne and so escaped the first part of the Terror. 
Not so, unfortunately, her people at the Hotel de 
Noailles. Six weeks prior to the execution of Marie 
Antoinette the Marechale de Noailles, the Duchess 
d'Ayen and Louise Vicomtesse de Noailles, grand- 
mother, mother and sister of Mme. de La Fayette, began 
to feel the approach of the all-devourer. Not long be- 
fore the loth of August they had abandoned the Hotel 
de Noailles as a dangerous place to live in because of its 
proximity to the Jacobin club and the Assembly. 
Mme. de Grammont (Rosalie) dwelt at a small house 
in the Faubourg Saint Germain ; thither they proceeded. 
Why quit the Hotel de Noailles? demanded the sus- 
picious authorities. Mme. d'Ayen not only explained 
satisfactorily, but, during the excitement caused by 
La Fayette's defiance of the Jacobins, made her way 

346 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

to Poissy. Autumn and winter were passed with 
M. d'Agusseau, her father-in-law, and M, d'Ayen, who, 
however, was soon forced to flee for his Hfe. They 
heard that Mme. de La Fayette was practically a pris- 
oner at Chavaniac, but were unable to help her or her 
husband. Mnie. de La Fayette's grandfather, the 
Marechal de Noailles, died in the thick of it all. Two 
friends, whose own lives were in constant peril, stood 
by them — M. Grellet, tutor of the three children of 
Louise, and the devoted Abbe Carrichon. They left 
Saint Germain for Paris, feeling that the time had 
come to act without dissimulation. Suspected in any 
event, they perhaps would be less open to suspicion at 
the Hotel de Noailles than elsewhere. When the 
detenus came to quiz them, they answered with such 
exactitude that for the time they seemed to be about to 
escape further molestation. 

" Madame d'Ayen," says M. MacDermot Craw- 
ford,^^ " boldly attached to her side, in the form of 
a watch-chain or chatelaine, all the diamonds and 
other jewels which were left to her. By this very open- 
ness they were saved, and the same day she sold them 
to a jeweler, who gave her at the moment enough 
money to pay some small debts, the rest to be paid 
later. This, however, the duchesse never received, as 
the jeweler was beheaded the next day. They were 
now reduced to absolute poverty, having nothing left 
to sell but a few clothes, and chiffons belonging 
to Louise de Noailles, for which they received a 
few francs." 

In May, 1794, the Revolutionary Tribunal ordered 
them to leave the Hotel de Noailles. They took a small 
house. Perhaps all would have gone well with them if 
the house had been furnished, but it was not, and they 
sought to obtain some pieces of furniture belonging to 

^ *' Madame de La Fayette and Her Family." 
347 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

them. A trifling incident connected with this brought 
down upon them all the furies. They were seized and 
thrown into the Luxembourg prison. 

Beaulieu . . . tells us that among the prisoners 
at the Luxembourg were " two ladies of high rank," the 
Duchesse de Noailles and the Duchesse d'Ayen. The 
first of these was about eighty-three years of age, quite 
deaf, and so weak that she could scarcely walk. At 
mealtimes she was obliged, like the others, to carry 
her own bottle and wooden plate to the common table, 
to get any food at all ; and, as the prisoners were half- 
starved, there was generally a crowd and a crush at 
this time in which the poor old Duchess got terribly 
pushed about. Being too weak to stand such rough 
conduct, she only managed to keep her feet by dragging 
herself along the room, and never reached the table 
until everyone else was seated. Then the jailer would 
take her rudely by the arm, twist her round, and push 
her upon the bench. One day, thinking that he had 
said something, she looked up and asked : '' Quest-ce 
que vous ditesf " 

" What do I say? " he replied, with a coarse expres- 
sion. " I say that there is nobody here to dangle after 
you. Stick yourself down there ! " and so saying, he 
placed the old Duchess upon the bench at table just 
as he would have done a parcel.^^ 

Soon thereafter (July 21) the " citoyennes Noailles 
— the Duchesse d'Ayen, the Vicomtesse de Noailles and 
the Marechale de Noailles — were transferred to the 
Conciegerie, whereby they knew they were to suffer 
death. Louise had but fifty sous in her pocket. Mme. 
Lavat, who with two other women happened to be in 
the same cell, deeply impressed with the misfortunes 

^"The Storm and Its Portents," by Dr. T. L. Phipson 
(1878), p. 244. 

348 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

of that unhappy family, gave her bed to the Marechale 
de Noailles; so the last night on earth of the daughter, 
of the proud Cosse-Brissacs owed its poor comfort 
to the consideration of an utter stranger." 

Few incidents of the French Revolution are as 
pathetic as the one chronicled by Abbe Carrichon, priest 
of the Congregation of the Oratoire, on the experiences 
of these ladies : *^ 

" One day, as the ladies were exhorting each other 
to prepare for death, I said to them, as by foresight: 
' If you go to the scaffold and if God gives me strength 
to do so, I shall accompany you.' They took me at my 
word and eagerly exclaimed : ' Will you promise to do 
so?' For one moment I hesitated. * Yes,' I replied, 
* and so that you may recognize me, I shall wear a dark 
blue coat, and a red waistcoat.' ... I avoid details 
which would be interminable. ... I could say 
much about the numerous and dismal processions. 
. . . On the 22d of July ( 1794) on a Tuesday morn- 
ing, as I was just going out, I heard a knock. I opened 
the door and saw the Noailles children with their tutor. 
The children were cheerful . . . the tutor looked 
sad, careworn, pale, haggard. * Let us go to your 
study,' said he, ' and leave the children in this room.' 
We did so. He threw himself on a chair. ' All is over, 
my friend,' he said. ' The ladies are before the Revolu- 
tionary Tribunal. I summon you to keep your word. 
I shall take the boys to Vincennes to see little Euphemie 
(their sister). While in the woods I shall prepare 
those unfortunate children for their terrible loss ! ' I 
said to M. Grellet: ' What a task I have before me! * 
. . . Left alone after their departure, I felt terrified 
and exhausted. ' My God, have pity on them and me.' 
I changed my clothes ... at two went to the 
Palais de Justice. ... I tried to get in . . . 
impossible. Opened my heart to a friend . . . 
took some coffee. ... At five returned. At last 
(near six) I saw from a movement in the crowd that 

'*° Macmillan's Magazine, LittcU's Living Age, Dec. 5, 
1891 ; "My Scrap-Book of the Revolution," Latimer; "Madame 
de La Fayette and Her Family," Crawford. 

349 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the prison door was on the point of being opened. I 
went down and placed myself near the outer gate. The 
first cart was filled with prisoners and came toward me. 
It was occupied by eight ladies whose demeanor was 
most edifying. Of these seven were unknown to me. 
The last, who was very near me, was the Marechale 
de Noailles. A transient ray of hope crossed my heart 
when I saw that her daughter and grand-daughter were 
not with her, but alas ! they were in the second cart. 
Mme. de Noailles was in white, which she had not left 
off since the death of her father and mother-in-law (the 
Marechal and Marechale de Mouchy), and she did not 
appear more than twenty-four years of age ; Mme. 
d'Ayen, who looked about forty, wore a deshabille of 
striped blue and w^hite. Six men got in after them. 
. . . I heard one near me say : ' Look at the young 
one ; how anxious she seems. See how she is speaking 
to the other one.' For my part, I felt as if I had heard 
all they were saying. ' Mama, he is not there.' ' Look 
again.' * Nothing escapes me, I assure you ; he is not 
there ! ' The first cart stopped before me during at 
least a quarter of an hour. It moved on. The second 
followed. I approached the ladies ; they did not see me. 
... I followed the cart over the bridge. . . . Mme. 
de Noailles still looking for me, did not perceive me. 
Mme. d'Ayen's anxiety became visible on her counte- 
nance. ... I felt tempted to turn back. . . 
Everywhere the crowd will be greater. Suddenly the 
sky became overclouded, thunder was heard in the 
distance. I made a fresh effort. A short distance 
brought me before the carts to the Rue Saint-Antoine, 
nearly opposite the too famous ' Force.' At that 
moment the storm broke forth, the wind blew violently ; 
flashes of lightning and claps of thunder followed in 
rapid succession ; the rain poured down in torrents. 
I took shelter at a shop door. In one moment the 
street was cleared; the crowd had taken refuge in 
the shops and gateways. There was less order in the 
procession, both the escort and the carts having quick- 
ened their pace. . . . The first cart passed. By 
a precipitate and involuntary movement I quitted the 
shop door and rushed towards the second cart and 
found myself close to the ladies. Mme. de Noailles 

350 



HIS CRISIS AND HIS CRITICS 

perceived me, and, smiling, seemed to say : ' There 
you are at last ! How happy we are to see you ! How 
we have looked for you ! Mama, there he is ! ' Mme. 
d'Ayen began to revive. As for myself, all the irreso- 
lution vanished from my mind. By the grace of God, 
I felt possessed of extraordinary courage. Soaked 
with rain and perspiration I continued to walk by 
them . . . 

" The storm was at its height. The wind blew 
tempestuously, and greatly annoyed the ladies in the 
first cart, more especially the Marechale de Noailles. 
With her hands tied behind her, with no support for her 
back, she tottered upon the wretched plank upon which 
she was placed. Her large cap fell back, and exposed 
some gray hairs. Immediately a number of people 
. . . recognized her. ' There she is, that Mare- 
chale who used to go about with so many attendants 
driving in such fine coaches ; there she is in the cart, 
just like the others ! ' The shouts continued, the sky 
became darker, the rain fell heavier still. 

** We were close to the carrefour preceding the 
Faubourg Saint-Antoine. I went forward, examined 
the spot, and said to myself, ' This is the place for 
granting them what they so much long for.' The cart 
was going slower. I turned towards the ladies and 
made a sign which Mme. de Noailles understood per- 
fectly. * Mama, M. Carrichon is going to give us abso- 
lution,' she evidently whispered. They piously bowed 
their heads with a look of repentance, contrition and 
hope. Then I lifted my hand, and, without uncovering 
my head, pronounced the form of absolution and the 
words which follow it distinctly and with supernatural 
attention. Never shall I forget the expression on their 
faces. From that moment the storm abated, the rain 
diminished, and seemed only to have fallen for the 
furtherance of our wishes. I offered up my thanks to 
God, and so did, I am sure, those pious women. Th^ir 
exterior appearance spoke contentment, security and 
joy. . . . A curious multitude again lined the sides 
of the streets, insulting the ladies in the first cart, but 
above all the Marechale. At last we reached the fatal 
spot. What a moment ! What anguish ! We came in 
sight of the scaffold. A ring of spectators formed. 

351 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

While the executioner and his two assistants were 
helping the prisoners out of the first cart, Mme. de 
Noailles's eyes sought for me in the crowd. She 
caught sight of me. What a wonderful expression 
there was in those looks . . . her eyes so ani- 
mated, so gentle, so expressive, so heavenly. . . . 
The mother and daughter took a last farewell of each 
other and descended from the cart. ... I left the 
spot where I was standing. ... I found myself 
opposite to the wooden steps which led to the scaffold. 
The Marechale de Noailles, dressed in black taffeta 
. . c was sitting on a block of wood or stone which 
happened to be there. All the others were drawn up 
in two lines looking towards the Faubourg Saint- 
Antoine. From where I stood I could see Mme. d'Ayen, 
whose attitude and countenance expressed the most 
sublime, unaffected and devout resignation. I shall 
never forget the impression she made at that moment. 
The Marechale de Noailles was the third person who 
ascended the scaffold. The upper part of her dress 
had to be cut away in order to uncover her throat. 
. . . A shuddering horror! . . . 

" Six ladies followed ; Mme. d'Ayen was the tenth. 
How happy she seemed to die before her daughter ! 
The executioner tore off her cap, as it was fastened by a 
pin which she had forgotten to remove; he pulled 
her hair violently and the pain he caused was visible 
in her countenance. 

" The mother disappeared ; the daughter took her 
place. What a sight to behold that young creature, all 
in white, looking still younger than she really was, like 
a gentle lamb going to the slaughter. I fancied I 
was witnessing the Martyrdom of one of the young 
virgins or holy women whom we read of in the history 
of the church. What happened to her mother also 
happened to her ; the same pin in the removal of her 
cap ; then the same composure, the same death. Oh ! 
the abundant crimson stream that gushed from her head 
and neck ; how happy she is now, I thought, as her body 
was thrown into that frightful coffin ! " 

Thus perished Mme. de La Fayette's grandmother, 
mother, and sister Louise, all of whom she adored. 

352 



VIII 

FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

There's little doubt that La Fayette would have 
been assassinated, as was Maudat ; or guillotined — and 
that speedily — had he permitted himself to be seized 
by his troops and sent back to Paris. So seized and so 
sent, he would have arrived in the midst of the hideous 
September massacres. Even the Commissioners who 
had come to Sedan to trip him fell eventually under 
the fury of the times. Two were killed; two became 
fugitives. " Before long," said Thiebault " a general's 
commission was called a commission for the guillotine." 
La Fayette felt that he was justified in his course; 
he had spent his fortune ; he had risked his life repeat- 
edly; his conscience was clear. But before leaving 
Sedan he made so careful a disposition of his forces 
that surprise on the part of Brunswick's troops was 
impossible. He thus minimized the danger to France. 
At the same time he arranged all his headquarters data 
so handily that his successor could grasp control at once. 
He assumed that General Liickner, one of his trusted 
associates, would take over the command before its 
transfer to General Dumouriez. He also courteously 
paid his respects, in an antedated letter, to the munici- 
pality of Sedan. He said that his continued presence 
there would compromise the city. He was " filled with 
affliction," he declared, at being no longer able to be 
of service to France. The evil conditions had been 
brought about by the crimes of a faction. He hoped, 
in course 'of time, to renew the oath of fealty he had 
taken to principles which had actuated him all his life. 
And so, farew^ell! 

23 353 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Of the men who rode with him — Latour Mau- 
bourg, Alexandre de Lameth ( Major-General in com- 
mand at Meziers) and Bureaux de Pusy are especially 
notable. La Fayette declared that de Pusy and Mau- 
bourg were " perhaps the only two patriots that calumny 
dared not assail." Colonel de Pusy " had been distin- 
guished by his popular conduct in the Franche-Comte 
previous to the convocation of the States-General. He 
had of late " earned his proscription, by the energy 
of his denunciation against the factions." Marie Vic- 
tor Nicolas, Marquis de Latour Maubourg,^ had been 
lieutenant in the Life Guards and cavalry. Colonel 
Alexandre de Lameth was one of the three sons of 
the Marquis de Lameth, who was killed in Hanover 
in 1762. When she was Dauphiness Marie Antoinette 
had become interested in the Lameth orphans and 
adopted them. All were well known to La Fayette. 
Charles, Comte de Lameth, had served with him in the 
Yorktown campaign. 

The painstaking historian, Stephens, whom we fol- 
lowed in describing the occurrences at Sedan during 

^ At that period many constitutional officers abandoned 
their posts, either to return to their homes as private citizens, 
or to serve as volunteer soldiers. A few aristocratic deserters 
went over to the enemy, but the number was small. Of the 
officers who were decided by La Fayette's example there were 
but two who did not join him — one the commanding officer of 
his vanguard, an excellent soldier, withdrew to Switzerland 
after a duel with an emigrant who had insulted the National 
cockade ; the other. Colonel d'Averhoult, had distinguished him- 
self in the Batavian revolution of 1787; he was afterwards 
deputy from the Ardennes to the legislative body and had 
just left the Assembly in order to defend liberty at the head 
of his regiment under La Fayette's orders, to whom he was 
doubly attached in his compound character of French and 
Batavian patriot ; being arrested on the frontier, he blew out 
his brains. — Note by La Fayette, " Memoirs," vol. iii, p. 389. 

After his release from prison Latour Maubourg was 
aide-de-camp to Kleber. He lost a leg at Leipsic. He sup- 
ported the monarchy and became a peer of France. He served 
as Ambassador at London. He was Governor of the Invalides 
from 1822 to 1830. He died at Paris in 1850. 

354 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

the decisive mid-week of August, gives the 20th as the 
date of La Fayette's departure. Belloc and most of the 
La Fayette writers make the date Sunday, the 19th. 
La Fayette followed the meadow road from the Meuse 
to the Gironne, crossed that river at the town of 
Gironne and proceeded northwardly between the Bc^is 
du los le Loup Gironne on the right and the Ardennes 
forest on the left. Somewhere beyond the Gironne 
woods were the Austrians; screened by the Ardennes 
forests were the French. Thus proceeding between 
distrusted forces, they came to an old town with a tower 
perched upon a steep hill, in the base of which were 
dungeons hewn out of the solid rock. It was Godfrey 
de Bouillon's old capital, which he sold, together with 
his w^iole duchy, that he might go crusading against 
the despoilers of Jerusalem. 

At this point La Fayette dismissed his ordinary 
escort. He also sent back his orderlies, by whom he 
transmitted final dispositions of such a character that 
General Clairfait, commanding the Austrians on that 
front, dared not attack. " Before sunset," says Belloc, 
" La Fayette crossed the bridge in front of the famous 
little forest town, with its enormous castle and crusad- 
ing legend, and rode out northward with his compan- 
ions, twelve miles and more, through the gathering 
darkness toward Rochefort, all the way in foreign 
land. . . . He did not know whether Rochefort 
itself was occupied or not. He hoped it was not, for 
he intended to make his way up through the Nether- 
lands to England, and so to America. At the very 
gates of Rochefort a great fire burning warned him 
of an outpost and he knew that the place was held." 

By this time the horses were fagged; rain had 
come on ; it was dark, save for the fires of those who 
guarded the town. Into the firelight rode Colonel de 
Pusy, who was soon in the presence of Lieutenant- 

355 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Colonel Count d'Harnoncourt, an emigre in the ser- 
vice of Austria. He it was who commanded at Roche- 
fort. Colonel de Pusy did his best to induce Count 
d'Harnoncourt to distinguish between a band of neu- 
trals seeking exit from the zone of trouble and a calva- 
cade of emigres desirous of joining their comrades in 
exile that they might return under the banners of the 
allied enemies of France. D'Harnoncourt demurred. 
He detained de Pusy until his comrades had ridden 
into Rochefort and put up at an inn. Here it was soon 
whispered that La Fayette was in the party; which, 
for this reason, was forbidden to depart until morning. 
Some Austrian hussars clattered up. Then Count 
d'Harnoncourt told de Pusy that he must goi with an 
officer to Namur, in order to secure a passport that 
would see them through to Liege. 

Meantime La Fayette, thus detained, must have 
had premonitions of the difficulties and dangers he 
was destined to encounter. It was from this town that 
he wrote to his wife at Chavaniac: 

" Whatever may be the vicissitudes of fortune, my 
dear heart, you know that my sou'l is not of the kind 
to give way ; but you know it too well not to have pity 
on the suffering that I experienced on leaving my 
country. For having ruined my family I make no 
excuse, neither to you nor to my children. There is 
none among you who would wish to owe fortune to 
conduct contrary to my conscience. Join me in Eng- 
land ; let us establish ourselves in America. We shall 
find there the liberty which exists no longer in France, 
and my tenderness will seek to recompense you for all 
the enjoyments you have lost." 

When they reached Namus on the 2ist of August, 
** Lieutenant-General the Marquis de Chasteler 
informed La Fayette that Prince Charles of Lorraine 
had been commissioned by their Royal Highnesses to 
converse with him respecting the situation of France ; 

356 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

and insinuated that, considering the just cause of com- 
plaint he had against his country, it was expected that 
he would exhibit some marks of it. * I know not/ 
said I.a Fayette, ' whether such a commission has been 
given; but I do not think that anyone will dare to 
deliver it to me.' At that moment Prince Charles 
entered. His obliging conversation was scarcely replied 
to by the prisoner, and when it was requested that the 
general officers should remain alone together, they 
became entirely dumb. * I think,' said M. de Chasteler, 
' that the situation in v^hich we are placed is painful 
to all parties ; and that this visit had better be 
closed.' And after the usual salutations the Com- 
missioner departed." ^ 

La Fayette, who understood the comities of the case 
and the courtesies that were due his party, also knew 
very well by this time the deadly danger of the hour. 
It was apparent that the situation was vicious in the 
extreme. Treachery was afoot ; but he scorned to pur- 
chase the least immunity by the slightest concession 
involving his rectitude. Again an insult: For a few 
days later, a commissioner of the Duke of Saxe Tes- 
chen, uncle of the Emperor, demanded that La Fayette 
should turn over the public treasure of the French army. 

" I am to infer, then," said La Fayette, " that if the 
Duke of Saxe Teschen had been in my place he would 
have stolen the military chest of the army." 

In spite of the sting in this reply, the same Austrian 
Major searched the portmanteaus of the Frenchmen, 
only to find in each but two months' pay, and no more. 

" In Namur," says Belloc, " the Austrian Comman- 
der, Motielle, was beside himself with joy on hearing 
the name. He shouted and repeated to himself aloud : 
* La Fayette ! ' as though he held in his power not the 

^ " Marquis de La Fayette," by an Officer in the Late Army 
(Robert Wain), 1849, p. 277. 

357 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

last sad exile from a soil too violently in love with 
freedom, but the most active of the new revolutionaries 
themselves ; for the name of La Fayette, execrated by 
all the Nationalists for that of a traitor in league with 
the King, was also execrated throughout the privileged 
classes of Europe for that of a rebel who had destroyed 
the majesty of the French crown. . . . The Gover- 
nor of Namur held him and sold him, a valuable prey, 
and he passed into the prisons of the allies." ^ 

But before La Fayette and his followers knew of 
Motielle's decision, " they signed a declaration that 
they were no longer officers, therefore not to be con- 
sidered by the allied forces as enemies ; and claimed as 
strangers free passage to the territory of the nearest 
nation not at war with their own."* . . . From 
Namur the twenty-three prisoners were taken to 
Nivilles, where they were separated into three grades. 
Those who had not served in the National Guard were 
released with a warning to leave the country ; the other 
officers, including those who had served as aides to 
La Fayette during the Revolution, were imprisoned 
in the Citadel of Antwerp, where they were held two 
months, and the four deputies of the Constituent 
Assembly were carried to Luxemburg. Here they 
were separated and conducted to Wesel by a Prussian 
detachment. At a Council held by a Committee of the 
Coalition, which followed the allied army, the Baron 
de Breteuil assisting as the Ambassador of Louis XVI, 
it had been agreed that the existence of La Fayette 

^ " High Lights of the French Revolution," by Hilaire 
Belloc. 

■* This paper was signed by La Fayette, Latour Maubourg, 
Alexandre de Lameth, Laumoy, Duroure, A. Masson, Sicard, 
Bureaux de Pusy, Victor Latour Maubourg, Victor Gouvion, 
Langlois, Sionville, A. Romeuf, Dagrain, L. Romeuf, Curmer, 
Fillet, La Colombe, V. Romeuf, C. Latour Maubourg, M. 
d'Arblay, Soubeyran, Ch. Cadignan. — Magazine of American 
History, vol. vi, p. 359. 

358 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

was incompatible with the safety of the govern- 
ments of Europe." ^ 

Many contemporary writers tell of the sensation 
caused by La Fayette's abandonment of the French 
army. There was talk about it from Dunkirk to the 
Swiss border; the news spread to the Rhine; particu- 
larly were the Bourbon princes excited. As for the 
Prussian and Austrian Courts, they were in great glee. 
They rejoiced in every fresh trouble that came upon 
France. They were willing that the factions in Paris 
should tear each other to pieces. They themselves 
were parcelling Poland ; and it suited them not to have 
a strong France that could loose their strangle-hold. 

For a while they were puzzled as to what should be 
done with so huge a catch as La Fayette. Should he 
be sent all the way to Austria, or could Prussia more 
conveniently extend to him the hospitality of its chains 
and dungeon depths ? It was decided to turn the pris- 
oners over to Prussia and that was why Wesel became 
their first dungeon. 

Let us not neglect to note, however, that, while the 
four ex-deputies were at Luxemburg, an attempt was 
made to assassinate La Fayette. Nor should we fail 
to mention that they were carted like common criminals, 
subject to vile peltings and barbarous insults, from 
Luxemburg to their Prussian prison. Wesel, in West- 
phalia, is a walled town near Coblenz. On a steep 
mountain at the town's edge is the castle of Schoen- 
berg, and just below, on the right bank of the Rhine, 
is the Lurley rock, with its seven-fold echo. 

Here they were shackled and locked into separate 
cells in the castle prison. Their guards — non-commis- 
sioned officers — neither spoke to them nor left them 
out of sight. La Fayette suffered from the dampness 
of this old Rhine dungeon, which, as fall came on, was 

^Magazine of American History, vol. vi, p. 356. 
359 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

likewise cold. He was informed that he would be 
transferred to much better quarters; in fact, well 
rewarded by the King of Prussia, if he would outline 
a plan of operations against France. The reply he 
gave resulted in even severer treatment than he had 
been subjected to. But for his bodily suffering he had 
a compensating sense of satisfaction in having kept 
his honor bright, his conscience clear, his manhood 
unsurrendered. The one thing that gave him deep dis- 
tress was the situation of his family and personal 
friends in France. He was sure, however, that it was 
better for them that he should be out of the actual 
ferment, out of France; since out of sight, as his old 
friend " Poor Richard " would have assured him, also 
must have meant, more or less, out of mind. It suited 
him to be forgotten. " The injustice of the people," 
he wrote, " without diminishing my devotion to the 
cause, has destroyed for me that delicious sensation of 
the smile of the multitude." There is a confession 
here : he liked the role of hero. And again : " A prison 
is the only proper place for me, and I prefer to suffer 
in the name of the despotism I have fought than in the 
name of the people whose cause is dear to my heart, 
and which is profaned to-day by brigands." 

When the emissaries of the King of Prussia found 
that they could influence La Fayette neither by bribes 
nor rigorous maltreatment, it was decided by the Court 
at Berlin to send him and his companions to a dungeon 
even more depressing than the one at Wesel. So their 
manacles were riveted tighter; they were loaded into 
common carts and these proceeded to Magdeburg in 
Saxony. Their fortress prison on the Elbe was one of 
the strongest in Prussia. "They remained a whole 
year at Madgeburg in a dark and humid vault, sur- 
rounded by high palisades, shut up by means of four 

360 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

successive doors, fortified by iron bars and fastened 
with padlocks." 

La Fayette's own letters from Madgeburg prison ^ 
help us to understand his life there. On March 15th, 
1793, he wrote to the American Consul at Hamburg, 
reminding him that he had been '' made a prey to the 
governing powers on this side of the Rhine " ; and 
bespeaking his secret aid, especially in forwarding let- 
ters to the Princess d'Henin at London. He and his 
three companions, he wrote, had been " dragged through 
horrid confinement to a most unpleasant narrow hole, 
digged under the ramparts of this citadel, which for 
wholesomeness may compare to a New York prison 
ship, but where I am shut up from all company, all 
kinds of news, and every means to hear from or write 
to my friends." Twelve days later, he smuggled out 
of the " hole digged under the ramparts " a long and 
illuminating letter to M. Archenholz, who had written 
a history of the Seven Years' War and who then edited 
La Minerve at Hamburg. La Fayette intimated that 
the letter was written with a toothpick dipped in lamp- 
black, probably wet with lemon juice. The man who 
had agreed to forward the letter was doing so at the 
risk of his life. " From Constantinople to Lisbon," 
continued La Fayette, " from Kamschatka to Amster- 
dam (for I am not on good terms with the house 
of Orange) every bastille awaits me. The Huron and 
Iroquois forests are peopled with my friends ; the 
despots of Europe and their courts — these to me are 
the savages. 

" America, the country of my heart, would receive 

^ Some of them are to be found in Memoires, Correspond- 
ance et Manuscrits du General La Fayette, publies par sa 
famille, Societe Beige de Libraire Bruxelles (1837-39); but 
others, bought at Hamburg by Jeremiah Colburn, of Boston, 
were published for the first time in the American Magazine of 
History, vol. vi, pp. 351-376. 

361 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

me with joy. Yet my solicitude for news from France 
would incline me to Switzerland for a while." 

Archenholz replied; his letter was delivered; evi- 
dently other letters reached La Fayette. He knew 
that General Washington had written to the King of 
England in his behalf ; that the King of Prussia had 
been appealed to. *' But America is very distant," 
commented the patient and dignified man in the hole 
under the ramparts ; " and European politics very tor- 
tuous. But beside that, I would not care that my friend 
and myself should be under obligations to George the 
Third. 1 doubt very much whether he would in good 
faith oblige the two men whom he most detests. I 
further look upon kings in general as being possessed 
of more instinct than reason." 

It was proposed by M. Archenholz that an attempt 
should be made to escape. In a letter dated August 23, 
La Fayette advised him of a plan to that end. Archen- 
holz was to cooperate. *' M. L. B." was to see him 
and arrange definitely as to a chart of the route 
towards Hamburg and Altona; arms, passports, a wig 
and '' drugs which in case of necessity may insure 
a quiet night's sleep to our jailers." La Fayette was 
almost as great a stickler for details as Washington. 
In the matter of the drug to be used on the jailers, 
Archenholz must be particular to indicate the dose. 
There was assurance, added La Fayette, that £4000 
would be forthcoming [for the expenses of the adven- 
ture] and a Jewish groom had been engaged. Horses 
were ready to take them five miles out from Magdeburg. 
** While the Commandant sleeps upon his bunch of 
keys, the Major de Place with his wife, the Captain 
of the guard withdraws his lieutenant and our sentinel 
for a moment, we are all four to crawl out from our 
holes, and with the Captain escape over the ramparts." 
Horses were to be held in readiness ; they were to mount 

362 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

and dash away to Helmstead, the rendezvous, where it 
was hoped that M. Archenholz would have carriages 
for them. " M. L. B." doubtless was the " My dear 
LeBlanc " of a letter smuggled out a week later. 
*' Each of us should have at least one pistol," wrote 
La Fayette ; " as for swords, each should have surely 
one. ... I hear them unfastening my first locks." 
This last sentence is like a vivid flash into the " hole 
digged under the ramparts " — the man in chains, with 
his pallid, underground look, hiding his toothpick pen, 
his scrap of paper and listening to the clank of the 
outermost of the fourfold doors. Later, " La T. Mgr." 
(Latour Maubourg) toothpicked a postscript. The 
friends were together then. Le Blanc, he wTOte, ** must 
make use of the four thousand livres." And another 
thing: If getting them all off would jeopardize the 
rescue of La Fayette, then all but La Fayette must be 
left to their fate. There was friendship for you worthy 
of Damon ! He — Maubourg — could and would stay 
in the hole and rot if necessary, but get La Fayette 
off! Again Latour Maubourg wrote to M. Le Blanc: 
*' If M. Miinche persists in his refusal, I see no other 
way but that of the chimney, which can only serve for 
my neighbor [La Fayette] and myself. But to be frank 
with you, the important point is that he should escape, 
in the first place, for the public good and also because 
were he free, we should not long be detained. You 
know that on this ground I desire his personal escape." 
One of La Fayette's most notable prison letters, 
dated Magdeburg, March 15, 1793, was addressed to 
the Princess d'Henin and forwarded to Madame de 
La Fayette at Chavaniac. Here is a passage from it 
descriptive of his situation : 

*' Represent to yourself an opening made in the 
rampart of the citadel, and encompassed with a high 
and strong palisade. It is by that passage, by entering 

363 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

successively through four gates, each one of which is 
armed with chains, locks and bars of iron, you may 
reach, not without difficulty and noise, my cell. This 
cell is three paces broad and five and a half long, 
containing no other ornament than two French verses 
which rhyme with the words, to suffer and to die 
(souffrir et mourir)." 

The walls, he said, dripped with moisture. The 
eyes of the sentinels were constantly upon him. " Books 
are furnished me from which all the white leaves are 
torn out, but I have no news, no gazettes, no com- 
munication, neither ink, nor pen, nor pencil; and it 
is by a miracle I possess this sheet on which I write to 
you with a toothpick. . . . You will easily con- 
ceive how ardently we sigh for our resurrection from 
this tomb. It was neither just or politic to arrest us, 
nor is it just or politic to retain us." 

La Fayette had now gone into something deeper 
than " a hole digged under the ramparts " of a Prus- 
sian fortress. For all his friends knew, he might 
be in his grave. In a sense he was in a tomb, immured, 
lost track of, a victim of the all-too-powerful despots 
who held sway between the Rhine, the Oder and 
the Danube. 

And now for an extraordinary character of the 
time, who comes into this narrative with as much natu- 
ralness as though he had always belonged to our story. 
His name was Erick Bollmann; he was a native of 
Hanover, and a graduate of medicine and surgery at the 
University of Gottingen. When he had received his 
diploma in the spring of 1791 he travelled first in Ger- 
many and then in France. In Paris he put up at the 
Hotel de Prince Edward and attended the lectures of 
Dessault at the Hotel Dieu. '^ He walked over dead 

' For Dr. Erick Bollmann's " Account," written by himself, 
see The Portfolio, Fourth Series, conducted by Oliver Old- 
school, Esq. ; vol. ii, No. 2, August, 1816. 

364 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

bodies on the night of the tenth of August. Later, 
Madame de Stael sent for him. She asked him to 
execute for her a secret mission. He promised. 
Would he smuggle the Comte de Narbonne, ex-Minister 
of War, then in hiding, out of Paris, and convoy him 
to London? He said he would. As a Hanoverian 
he got from Lord Gower, British Ambassador, a pass- 
port for England, had it exchanged by M. LeBrun, 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the French passport 
duly signed by M. Petion, Mayor of Paris. Then he 
prevailed upon an Alsatian to pose as a Hanoverian, 
and obtained a passport for him just as he had procured 
his own. This second passport was used by the Comte 
de Narbonne, disguised as an Englishman in a " blue 
English great-coat," filched from the wardrobe of 
Talleyrand, who had worn it home from London 
(whither he had gone as a diplomat) and had not 
taken it back with him to that capital. There was a 
thrilling moment when Bollmann and Narbonne stepped 
into the guard-room at the barrier of the Rue St. Denis 
and found themselves in the presence of between twenty 
and thirty scowling red-capped Revolutionists. But 
they passed muster and went successfully through sev- 
eral similar scenes on the road to Boulogne. " A 
packet was just ready. It blew a gale, but fair. At 
seven they drank tea in Dover." Narbonne was safe. 
Bollmann's exploit, talked about in confidential 
whispers, reached the ears of Count Lally de Tollen- 
dal, then in London, who eagerly sought out the Hano- 
verian and begged him to become the bearer of a 
memorial to the King of Prussia in behalf of La Fay- 
ette. Never one more willing than Bollmann for dar- 
ing adventure. With his credentials, he set out for 
Prussia. But Berlin proved to be hard of heart. At 
Magdeburg the sentinels were " suddenly doubled, and 
all the padlocks changed." A few weeks later La Fay- 

365 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ette was removed to Neisse in Silesia, and soon after- 
wards escorted to the Austrian frontier. Neisse is a 
fortified town on a tongue of land between the Neisse 
and Biela, affluents of the Oder. To La Fayette with 
its effluvium from the marshes it proved unhealthy. 
Latour Maubourg, it seems, was not with him at 
Neisse but had been taken to Glatz, a garrison town, 
walled and fortified. On one side was a castle topping 
a high hill ; on the other a fortress. Bureaux de Pusy, 
likewise manacled, was soon incarcerated in the same 
fortress. As for Alexandre de Lameth, his mother, 
arriving from France, successfully interceded in his 
behalf. He was given his parole and finally set free. 
No doubt the Austrian Court remembered Marie 
Antoinette's liking for Lameth. 

We have now come to May, 1794, and are near 
the Austro-Prussian border. In that month, La Fay- 
ette, Maubourg and de Pusy were carted over the hills 
into Moravia. At last they had " struck bottom." They 
were buried alive at Olmutz. But Bollmann did not 
know whither La Fayette had been taken. He was 
mystified. So were all those in London who were sad- 
dened by rumors that La Fayette and his companions 
were about to succumb, or had already died. Still, 
hope — a spark of it — was left ; and Bollmann set about 
his work once more ; this time posing as " a traveller in 
pursuit of knowledge." ** After a short stay in Sax- 
ony, he proceeded to Silesia, and there ascertained that 
La Fayette, after some detention at Neisse, had actually 
been surrendered to the Austrian government ; a 
detachment of Austrian troops having received 
him and his, fellow-prisoners, and taken the route 
towards Olmutz." 

Bollmann studied the situation. He pitched upon 
Tarnowitz, near the frontier of Poland, 'and but a 
little ways from that of Austria and Silesia, as a rendez- 

366 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

vous. He became very much interested in lead-min- 
ing; and, as the mines where the King of Prussia 
obtained his raw material for musket balls were at 
Tarnowitz in charge of Count Rheden, it suited excel- 
lently for our pseudo-scientist to loiter about the place. 
Plere he was just out of sight of the secret police of 
Austria but within reach of Olmutz. Olmutz, be it 
said, is no miles from Vienna. Twelve miles away is 
far-famed Austerlitz, then an unknown village, and 
just beyond Austerlitz is Brunn, the present-day capital 
of Moravia. Olmutz was the old capital. It grew out 
of ancient Olatium, a Roman colony. It was a 
stronghold in the Middle Ages, withstood a Mongol 
attack and became a considerable centre, having its 
gothic Hotel de Ville, its great squares, in one of which 
stood the trinity column ; its 14th century gothic cathe- 
dral, its beautiful churches and its university dating 
from 1570. 

As Bollmann was a medical man, it was quite an 
unsuspicious thing for him to do when he got to 
Olmutz to visit the hospital there and engage the chief 
surgeon in conversation on the progress of their great 
art. Casually, in one of these friendly interviews, 
Bollmann drew a pamphlet from his pocket. They 
had been talking of " the effect of moral impressions 
on the constitution." 

" Since we are on this subject," said our Eighteenth 
Century Sherlock Holmes, ** you attend to state pris- 
oners here — Lafayette is among them — his health must 
be impaired. Show him this pamphlet. Tell him a 
traveller left it with you, who lately saw in London 
all the persons named in it, his particular friends, 
that they are well and continue attached to him as 
much as ever. This intelligence will do him more 
good than all your drugs." 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Bollmann's " shot in air " hit the target.^ A few 
days later the surgeon told him that he had handed the 
pamphlet to La Fayette. This gave Bollmann the 
greatest joy. Sure enough, then, his man was at 
Olmutz ; not only so, but a line of communication with 
him was open and the go-between was off his guard. 

What more natural than that Bollmann should send 
La Fayette a line? It was a scientific experiment, of 
course. Here was a rare opportunity to test the effect 
of encouragement upon a desponding man ; and it could 
not fail because the surgeon himself would be the 
chronicler of the phenomenon connected with the case. 
Bollmann fumbled in his pocket. H he only had a bit 
of paper — ah ! here was a piece, just the right size ! 
He wrote a few lines in French, closing with the sen- 
tence : *' I am glad of the opportunity of addressing 
you these few words, which, when read with your usual 
warmth, will afford to a heart like yours some conso- 
lation." The paper had been previously written over 
with sympathetic ink, a writing invisible unless brought 
out by the application of heat. This means of con- 
veying secret intelligence had been so often used during 
the French Revolution that it was thought the slight 
hint given would be sufficient — and so it proved. The 
surgeon took the paper and thus the Marquis became 
acquainted with the true motive of the doctor's journey, 
and with his readiness to run all hazards, and serve 
him in any practicable way.^ But La Fayette must 
point out the various devices to be used and moves to be 
made in order to secure egress and to gain the neces- 
sary time in the event of pursuit. 

^ It appeared subsequently that the surgeon could not read 
French. 

* Bollmann's note of inquiry after La Fayette's health 
toncluded with these words : " Quand vous aurai lu ce billet 
mettre le au feu." The experiment was a hazardous one but 
it succeeded. La Fayette held it to the fire and instantly caught 
the message of his benefactor. 

368 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

Away went Bollmann then. He wanted to see 
Austria. He needed a carriage, of course ; so he had one 
built, and a place constructed in it for the secret 
storage of — what ? He did not tell the carriage-builder, 
who might assume, if he pleased, that the traveller 
wished to carry some precious freight there — money- 
bags, ore, jewels. But he put in rope-ladders, cords, 
a number of " tools for cutting iron bars," and the like. 
Then he ** visited several gentlemen on their estates in 
Moravia," and after several weeks had passed returned 
to Olmutz. When he called on the surgeon, that unsus- 
pecting agent handed him his pamphlet. Into his 
pocket it went, but no sooner was he alone than out it 
came. La Fayette had responded. " Written over the 
margin with sympathetic ink (limejuice)" was a mes- 
sage for him. It was to the efifect that owing to his 
enfeeblement he was to be permitted to take an airing 
on stated days in the week. He was to be in a carriage 
which was to have a military guard. The thing to do, 
suggested La Fayette, " would be to attack the guard on 
one of these excursions," and then to take him off. 

Bollmann watched during one of these airings in 
order to get his cue. La Fayette " sat in an open 
carriage with an officer by his side, a driver on the 
box, and tw^o armed soldiers standing behind." That 
was enough for Bollmann. He returned to Vienna 
and concerted measures with a young American, Fran- 
cis Kinloch Huger,^- of South Carolina, whom he had 
met during his first visit to that capital. They brought 
two saddle horses, engaged a groom and returned to 
Olmutz. Bollmann told the surgeon that he and his 
friend were about to depart for England. Knowing 
the day when La Fayette was to take his airing, he 

" Pronounced " Ujee." See the account of La Fayette's 
visit to Major Benjamin Huger, in Chapter IV of this book. 

24 369 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

mentioned that date as the time of his departure. Let 
us quote : 

*' The day arrived, the groom, soon after breakfast, 
was dispatched to the next post town, called Hoff, about 
twenty-five miles distant, and ordered to have fresh 
horses in readiness and put to, in the afternoon at four 
o'clock, as they intended to reach a frontier town in 
Prussian Silesia that night. 

" Aibout two in the afternoon, the hour when the 
Marquis used to take his ride, their saddled horses were 
ready at the inn, and Mr. Huger feigned some business 
near the town gate, in order to watch the moment when 
the carriage should pass. As soon as he saw it come, 
he flew to the inn. Our adventurers mounted and fol- 
lowed the carriage at some distance, armed only with 
a pair of pistols, and those not loaded with ball. Their 
success was calculated on surprise, and, under all the 
circumstances of the case, to take any person's life 
would have been unjustifiable, useless, and imprudent. 

" The carriage had proceeded two or three miles 
when it left the high road, and took a track traversing 
an open plain; for in Moravia, the fields are only 
separated by small ditches, instead of fences or hedges, 
and the respective boundaries are marked by corner- 
stones. The plain was covered by laboring people. 

" Presently the carriage stopped. La Fayette and 
the officer stepped out and walked arm in arm, probably 
to give the former more opportunity for exercise. The 
carriage, with the guard, drove slowly on, but remained 
in sight. 

" This was the moment. The two companions gal- 
loped up; the doctor, dismounting, left his horse with 
Huger. At the same instant the Marquis laid hold of 
the officer's sword, but could only draw half of it from 
the scabbard, as the officer, a stout man, had seized 
it; also, the doctor joining, he was presently disarmed, 
but he then grasped the Marquis, held him with all his 
might and set up a tremendous roaring, not unlike that 
of Mars in the ' Iliad.' The guard, on hearing it, in- 
stead of coming to his assistance, ran. The people in the 
field stood aghast. A scuffle ensued. ^^ Huger passed 

" According to " Prison Adventures of La Fayette," the 
officer tried to draw La Fay-ette toward the carriage. At that 

370 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

the bridle of the two horses over one arm, and with his 
other hand thrust his handkerchief into the officer's 
mouth to stop the noise. The officer, the Marquis, and 
the doctor came to the ground. The doctor kneeHng on 
the officer, kept him down while the Marquis rose. 

" All would have been well, but one of the horses, 
taking fright at the scene and noise, had reared, slipped 
his bridle and ran off. A countryman caught him and 
was holding him at a considerable distance. Whether 
he could be had again was doubtful. The doctor, still 
keeping down the officer, handed a purse to the Mar- 
quis, requested him to mount the horse that was left, 
and to proceed to Hoff, where he would promptly join 
him, if possible. If not^ to make the best of his way 
towards the frontier. 

" The Marquis was out of sight in a minute. The 
officer recovered from his panic, fled towards Olmutz. 
The doctor and Mr. Huger went for the horse which 
had escaped. The peasant who had caught him gave 
him up for a piece of gold. They both mounted, but 
this animal, less docile and tractable than the other, 
which had been intended for the task, refused to carry 
double, reared and bounded and presently threw both.^^ 
Mr. Huger immediately said : * This will not do ! The 
Marquis wants you. Push on. I'll take my chance on 
foot across the country.' The doctor galloped off after 
the Marquis, who was out of sight. He soon reached 
Hoff, but did not find him there. Had he missed the 
road? Had he designedly changed his course? It 
was impossible to tell. It was certain, however, that 
to have returned in search of him would have been idle, 
whilst pushing on and drawing after him those who 
undoubtedly would pursue, might the better secure his 
escape. He therefore instantly stepped into the car- 
riage and ordered the post-boy to drive on. It was now 

moment Huger reached the spot. " You are free," said he ; 
" mount this horse, and Fortune be our guide !" but the words 
were scarcely uttered when the sun, glancing on the naked 
blade of the sword, startled the horse he led. He broke the 
bridle and dashed away. 

" Bollman was so badly hurt by the fall that he was with 
difficulty raised from the ground. Huger ran till, breathless 
and exhausted, he fell and was picked up by the peasants. 

371 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

sun-down. Between eleven and twelve at night he 
passed the frontier. 

'* But on the second day, after his departure from 
Olmutz, Bollmann was overtaken. Huger had been 
caught and sent to Olmutz. 

** Meanwhile La Fayette ? He had misunderstood 
his instructions. He had been told to hurry to Hofif. 
He thought the muttered command was : * Be off ! ' 
So, instead of asking the way to Hofif, of which place 
he knew nothing, when he had come to the fork of the 
road at Sternberg he kept on and thereby reached the 
Prussian frontier at the wrong place — ^Jaegersdorf. 
Had he taken the other road at Sternberg he would have 
reached HofT, would have come upon the carriage and 
on Bollmann's arrival would have proceeded with that 
rescuer to possible safety. As it was, as soon as his 
horse gave out he hailed a stranger and requested him 
to go find another. ' By his accent, his appearance, 
his request and his money,' he aroused suspicion. The 
man apparently intended to oblige him. What he did 
was to betray him. He brought back from the nearest 
village a magistrate who held La Fayette for three days 
before returning him to his Olmutz dungeon. Into the 
same prison, half underground, the Austrians soon 
thrust both Bollmann and Huger. The cell of one 
was below that of the other. ' Only a faint light broke 
into this place through a narrow, oblique aperture, made 
in a wall upwards of five feet thick.' Vermin swarmed 
over them. The food allowed each man cost but four 
cents a day — no more could be had for gold or by favor. 
" But like La Fayette, they found that hope does not 
die in a dungeon, however deep and however dark. 

* When deprived of almost everything,' says Bollmann, 

* the value and importance of what is left rises in pro- 
portion. A sharp bone discovered in a piece of meat 
and hid ; a pin, found in a chink ; a piece of charcoal, 
of chalk, happily secreted, are so many hoarded treas- 
ures that feed hope, impart elasticity to the mind and 
give rise to endless combinations." 

Such is the conviction of anyone who reads the 
amazing account of the experiences of Henri Masers de 

372 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

Latude/^ who having incurred the enmity of Madame 
de Pompadour, spent almost a lifetime in the Bastille. 
He it was who made a rope-ladder, i8o feet long, from 
ravellings of his own linen ; sawed for six months at 
huge iron-gratings in his chimney, coming down each 
time with bloody hands and legs; and at last lowered 
himself from tower-top to freedom — only to be rein- 
carcerated. He tamed the prison rats, so that they 
would come to him to scratch their backs; or dance 
to a tune from his flageolet, made out of a bit of elder- 
wood and an old buckle. He charmed the pigeons, too ; 
and lived altogether as wonderful a life as Robinson 
Crusoe on his island. One often thinks of Latude in 
reading of La Fayette's experiences in the dungeons 
of Central Europe. 

At first Bollmann and Huger suffered the severest 
of treatmicnt because their plot was supposed to be 
a part of a larger one against the Austrian government, 
Huger was chained to the floor of his dungeon. He 
was fortunate in obtaining a sympathetic young man as 
his interpreter when brought to trial. This youth made 
the best of his case, visited him in his cell and told him 
much that he would not otherwise have knov/n. 

" The window which threw a borrowed light into 
his own cell, served likewise to light that of Bollmann ; 
and, with a piece of lime taken from the wall, Huger 
contrived to scratch a few words upon a black silk 
handkerchief, which, by fastening to a stick, and climb- 
ing up the side of the room, he raised as near the 
common window as he could. It attracted the attention 
of Mr. Bollmann, and, after many efforts making 
himself master of it, he returned the answer by the 
same method." 



" " Imprisonments and Escapes of Latude," in " My Scrap- 
book of the French Revolution," by E. W. Latimer, pp. 70-ic^. 



373 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

They communicated daily, bribed the jailer's wife 
and at last were allowed to meet. 

But Huger's friend, the interpreter, was moving in 
their behalf. A rich Russian lived nearby. He told 
the interpreter to tickle the magistrate's palm with gold, 
which he himself supplied in quantity. The magistrate 
sentenced Bollmann and Huger to fourteen years each 
in the dungeon depths — a sentence much applauded at 
Vienna ; shortened it to seven, then to one ; then to a 
month ; then to a week, at the end of which time, thanks 
to the good-hearted interpreter and the generous Rus- 
sian, they were released. 

They lost little time in quitting Austria; but were 
obliged to leave La Fayette in his living grave. ^* 

But what of Madame de La Fayette, all this time. 
She, poor woman, had a triple burden to bear. She 
knew^ of the monstrous dilemma of the Noailles ladies 
in Paris, of her father's exile in Switzerland, and of 
her husband's seizure by the Coalition — a thing of Aus- 
trian beak and Prussian talons. Not only so, but her 
neighbors at Chavaniac, infected wath the virus of class 
hatred, had begun to treat her household with unwonted 
roughhandedness. She burned her papers and buried 
her valuables, *' among them the sword of honor given 
by the United States on August 24th, 1779, to La Fay- 
ette and presented by the son of Benjamin Franklin 
to the General." 

'* It was very handsome, being made of massive 
gold, with emblematic designs illustrative of La Fay- 
ette's setting out for America to help the cause." When 
George Washington La Fayette dug it up long after- 
wards the blade had turned to rust. The blade put 

" Dr. Bollmann afterwards went to America and sought 
public employment there. Washington found him a trouble- 
some guest. He was implicated in Burr's conspiracy at New 
Orleans, and, in 1807, La Fayette interceded with Jefferson in 
his favor.—" Life of General La Fayette," by Bayard Tucker- 
man, vol. ii, note. 

374 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

in was that of the sword presented to La Fayette by the 
National Guard in 179 1. It had been ' forged from 
the bolts and bars of the Bastille.' " ^^ 

Mme. de La Fayette sent her son George with his 
tutor, M. Frestel, to a refuge in the mountains, and her 
daughters to the town of Langeac. Happening a little 
later to be at Brioude, she was so well received as to lose 
some of her sense of insecurity; but on the night of 
September 10 M. Puy, a revolutionist, burst into her 
room at Chavaniac with an order signed by M. Roland, 
demanding her presence in Paris. One of the guards 
who accompanied M. Puy boasted that he had killed 
an officer " because he was an aristocrat." " Nowa- 
days, Madame," said another, " public opinion is the 
only tribunal." Letters were seized, portraits jabbed 
with bayonets, and other petty outrages perpetrated. 

Mme. de Chavaniac, in spite of her age, coura- 
geously accompanied her from the chateau to Le Puy. 
On the first night, the stop was at Foix. At Le Puy, 
next day, some stones cast by a vociferous mob struck 
the La Fayette carriage. At the Department headquar- 
ters, Madame de La Fayette said to the officials : " You 
receive. Messieurs, your orders from M. Roland or 
from whomsoever you please. I only receive them 
from you, and I give myself up as your prisoner." 

This may serve as a typical instance of Madame 
de La Fayette's straightforwardness and tactful treat- 
ment of those with whom she was obliged to deal during 
many years to come. She always assumed that General 
La Fayette had no guile in his heart; that, if ill-times 
had come upon him and her, it was not because of any- 
thing either had done against the people of France. 
She bore with her the air of truth, reverence and devo- 
tion, and there was about all this a charm that con- 

" " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," by M. Mac- 
Dermot Crawford. 

375 



THE TRUE LA PAYETTE 

stantly stood her in good stead. Another typical 
instance has to do with this visit to Le Puy : She 
insisted that such of La Fayette's letters as had been 
seized at Chavaniac should be copied prior to their 
transmission to the Revolutionary authorities in Paris. 
Li those treacherous times, this was a wise safeguard. 
So excellent was her conduct at Le Puy that she was 
permitted to return to Chavaniac, which was to be her 
" prison on parole." M. Montfleury, a man of great 
kindness, as well as others, helped her, and she herself 
wrote to M. Brissot,^*^ in Paris, making a full explana- 
tion of what happened after the receipt of M. Roland's 
lettre de cachet. 

Thus arranged, affairs seemed to be going well at 
Chavaniac; but M. Roland took exception to a polite 
expression in Madame de La Fayette's letter to M. Bris- 
sot, and in his reply declared that it smacked of an 
aristocratic hand. Roland's letter was read and 
applauded at the Department, and it was decided that a 
guard should be established at Chavaniac. Madame de 
La Fayette went at once before the committee and thus 
addressed it : 

'* I here declare, gentlemen, that I will not give 
the parole I offered if guards are to be placed at my 
door. Choose between these two securities. I cannot 
be offended by your not trusting me, for my husband 
has given still better proof of his patriotism than I 
have of my honesty ; but you will not allow me to 
believe in my own integrity and not add bayonets to my 
parole ! " She won as to the guards. The Committee 
withdrew them and left her unmolested. Nor did she 
fail to rebuke M. Brissot for the use he had made of 
her previous letter. To M. Roland, she wrote that she 

"This communication,^ signed Noailles-La Fayette, with 
numerous others, appears in full in Crawford's " Madame de 
La Fayette and Her Family." 

376 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

would " vow eternal gratitude " to whosoever should 
enable her to join her husband in his captivity. " It 
is on my knees, if necessary, that I implore this favor ; 
imagine by that the state I am in." 

This was, in sooth, her burning thought — ^to go find 
her husband. All the Penelopes do not sit at home and 
spin. First, though, she wished to send her son George 
out of France. She planned to ship him off to the 
care of his father's comrades in America. She arranged 
that M. Frestel, travelling with a tradesman's license, 
should work his way with the lad to Bordeaux. Thence 
he could go to England, and thence across the sea. 

By La Fayette's English farmer, John Dyson, of 
Gunton, near Lowestoft, Sussex, she sent to England 
a letter to be there posted to General Washington. The 
letter informed him of La Fayette's imprisonment and 
appealed for help in bringing about his rescue. It was 
dated October 8, 1792; again she wrote on March 13, 
1793. Washington addressed her on January 31st, 
March i6th and June 13th, expressing deep sympathy. 
But two of the missives miscarried. In one letter he 
notified her that he had placed to her credit 200 guineas 
at a bank in Amsterdam.^' He was working in other 
directions to bring about La Fayette's release ; but, 
without becoming his apologist in this moot matter, 
it must be said that Washington probably could not 
do, or cause to be done, all that he wished done in 
La Fayette's behalf because of the tense condition of 
Franco-American affairs at the period. Matters of the 
first magnitude hung in the balance; and a wrong 
word or act by him would have committed not himself 

" Crawford comments ("Madame La Fayette and Her 

Family," pp. 182, 183) : " She probably never received the 
money. In the matter of his conduct in this instance toward 
the La Fayette family, Washington does not appear in the 
best light. . . . Washington's conduct was ultra-conservative " ; 
and more to the s>ame effect. 

377 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

alone but the country he had sworn to serve. Madame 
de La Fayette's biographer is unjust to Washington 
in this charge: " Though he made some feeble efforts 
in behalf of La Fayette, not a word in any of his let- 
ters shows that he took a single step toward effecting 
the freedom of the prisoner at Chavaniac. He made 
no appeal, official or otherwise, to the French govern- 
ment in behalf of Madame de La Fayette." ^^ No 
doubt Washington felt that she was far safer where 
she was. M. Roland certainly thought so. He wrote to 
her : " I have put, Madame, your touching request 
under the eyes of the Committee. I must, neverthe- 
less, observe that it would seem to me imprudent for 
a person bearing your name to travel through France 
on account of the unpleasant impression which, at the 
present moment, is attached to it. I advise you to 
wait." 

She did wait, but not idly, for she wrote to the 
General of the Armies of the Coalition, to the King 
of Prussia and to such others as might help her obtain 
her husband's release. She was tireless. She was 
in the deepest distress, too. M. Beauchet, who lent 
her his services as messenger between Paris and 
Auvergne, brought her no good news. He had seen 
her mother and sister, surreptitiously, and she had 
learned from him what was in the hearts of those 
stricken, those doomed, but most devout and coura- 
geous women. 

Once during these hard days, Chavaniac had a sur- 
prise which in the main was joyous. M. Frestel, with 
his pupil, suddenly reappeared at the chateau. Their 
efforts to reach England had come to naught. Mme. 

" " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," by M. Mac- 
Dermot Crawford. 

378 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

de Chavaniac, who had grieved over the lad's absence, 
was happy once more/^ 

Yet, for the most part, Mme. de La Fayette was 
concerned with her husband's many-sided affairs. She 
attempted, by the aid of M. Marthory, her lawyer, 
to prevent sequestration.-" Klopstock had written 
favorably of La Fayette's case. She found a way of 
communicating with that celebrity in the hope of enlist- 
ing him in a cause so dear to her. When word came 
that Jean Baptiste Lacoste had advocated her arrest, 
she set out for Brioude and bearded him in his den. 
" I ask," said she, ** to be left with my children in the 
only situation which can be bearable to me so long as 
their father remains a captive of France's enemies." 
According to Crawford, Lacoste replied : 

" Citoyenne, such feelings are worthy of you." 
** I care little," she replied, " to know whether they 
are worthy of me; I only wish they should be worthy 
of him." 

Soon thereafter the cure of Chavaniac was seized 
and was about to be condemned by a jury of peasants 
at Aurat when Mme. de La Fayette suddenly appeared 
before the court. *' Being a woman of great resource 
and eloquence, she talked with such tact, energy and 
affability " that she won the day. 

About this time a peasant in rags, with the mud 
of many roads upon him, appeared at the chateau. 
He would see no one but Madame de La Fayette, to 

" The boy was finally sent from Havre in care of Mr. 
Russel, of Boston, and duly reached Mount Vernon. He 
became a member of General Washington's family. Latrobe, 
the architect, saw him in July, 1798, and describes him. Wash- 
ington sent him to Harvard. 

^ Madame de La Fayette boldly appeared at the auction of 
La Fayette's property and protested against " the enormous 
injustice of applying the law of emigration to one who is at 
this moment a prisoner of the enemies of France." She tried 
also to extricate her personal fortune, and to make those who 
had seized La Fayette's property pay his small debts. 

379 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

whom he handed a letter, departing, then, without a 
word. It was the letter of March 15, 1793, to the 
Princess d'Henin, from which we have already quoted; 
and which gave a vivid and heart-rending account of 
the suffering of La Fayette and his companions in 
the Magdeburg dungeons. 

Mme. de La Fayette must have shed many a tear 
over this letter, however great her fortitude. She 
wrote to Gouvemeur Morris, hoping to arrange her 
affairs,-^ so that she herself — La femme La Fayette, 
as she proudly put it — might go to the world's end 
in search of her mate. 

One item in La Fayette's letter gave her some 
relief " Ten thousand florins," he wrote, " have been 
deposited here on the part of the United States, which 
sum will prevent me, when my money is exhausted, 
from living on bread and water ; but though my Ameri- 
can friends are more occupied concerning my liberty 
than my sustenance, I have not heard anything further." 

Mme. de La Fayette was tempted to leave France 
by way of Lyons ; but, when news came of the terror- 
ism rampant there, she decided not to go in that direc- 
tion. Should she go at all? So much held her in 
Auvergne. So far she had checked the extremists by 
her fearless appearance at Brioude on critical occasions. 

But on the 17th of September the decree concern- 
ing suspected persons (Contre les suspects) was regis- 
tered ; and, like a bitter storm, ferocious times came 
on. " Every one known to have aided in any way the 
family of La Fayette," says Crawford, " was sum- 
marily arrested. Nobles, aristocrats, even some of the 
worthy patriots, shared this fate. And, on the 21st 
Brumaire (November ist), word came that Madame 
de La Fayette herself was to be imprisoned on the fol- 

^ At the sequestration sale of La Fayette's property Mme. 
de Chavaniac bought in the chateau and its grounds. 

380 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

lowing day. She kept this dreadful intelligence to 
herself, not telling her family and servants till the next 
morning, wishing to spare them as long as possible the 
sorrow this news would bring. On the same day 
all the papers at Chavaniac " tainted with the spirit of 
feudal times . . . were placed on a cart to make 
a huge bonfire for the people to dance around." That 
evening a detachment of the National Guard of Paul- 
haguet, in charge of a member of the Revolutionary 
Committee, M. Granchier, came to the chateau. Sur- 
rounded by those she loved, the order for her arrest was 
read to her. 

'* Citoyen," asked her daughter Anastasie, " are 
daughters prevented from following their mothers ? " 
"Yes, mademoiselle," he rephed; and seemed moved 
when she insisted that she was sixteen and therefore 
was included in the law. 

That night Mme. de La Fayette spent in Brioude 
jail. The cell was small. There were eleven women 
in it — one sick ; and when Mme. de La Fayette asked 
that more air be allowed her she was subjected to vile 
abuse. She had clean linen once a week, and on the 
list accompanying it she was kept informed of Chava- 
niac happenings. 

In January, 1794, Anastasie visited her mother 
secretly at night. She had bribed the jailer. She left 
before morning. Imagine the all-night conference 
between mother and daughter. They planned in tears. 
Bitterer and bitterer grew their cup. Even Mme. de 
Chavaniac was for a while under the thumb of the 
Terrorists. No one was more gentle than Mme. de 
La Fayette, unless, indeed, it was her sister Louise, now 
about to die; yet Solon Reynaud, a violent Jacobin, 
at Le Puy, accused Adrienne of being ''the arrogance of 
the Noailles personified " — wife of the man, he said, 

3S1 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" whose bowels he should like to tear out." ^^ This 
man Reynaud, a representative, soon went to Paris, 
where he became a vicious enemy of the La Fayettes 
and the Noailles family. His successor at Brioude, 
Guyardin, ** constantly wore a boutonniere composed 
of a large wooden spoon and knife." 

The change for the worse came on with Robes- 
pierre's accession to power. " The vengeance of 
Robespierre," says the author of " Prison Adventures 
of La Fayette," -^ was wreaked with savage inveter- 
acy against the unfortunate wife of La Fayette. . . . 
She escaped death by something like a miracle ; for the 
space of fifteen months she endured all the horrors 
of a loathsome confinement." 

*' The order for Mme. de La Fayette's removal 
(from Brioude to Paris) was brought by M. Gissau- 
guer, the brother of her lawyer, M. Montfleury — at that 
time imprisoned — who was a captain of Gendarmes."^* 
Gissauguer was overwhelmed with shame. He insisted 
upon accompanying her to Paris. She anticipated 
death at her journey's end; so sought the cure of 
Chavaniac in his cell and unburdened her soul. In a 
garret, half-hidden, were a number of nuns — these 
she climbed the stairs to embrace and weep with. That 
night while she was abed in jail, with her shackles 
at her side, M. Festrel brought in her children. Vir- 
ginie and George were with her all night ; but Anastasie, 
having obtained her mother's consent to go with 
M. Frestel as far as Melun, where Gouverneur Morris 
was then living, she ran forth in the night to beg a 
passport. Citoyen Guyardin rebuffed her ; nor could 

^ " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," p. 208. 
^See Chambers' Journal: Reprinted in LittelVs Living 
Age, vol. viii, p. 324. 

" " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," by M. Mac- 
Dermot Crawford. 

382 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

she obtain permission at Aurat to accompany her 
mother to Melun. It was good that so firm a friend 
as M. Gissauguer rode to Paris with Mme. de La Fay- 
ette. At Fontainebleau her carriage was mobbed; 
there she " faced a thousand eyes full of hatred." 
Her arrival in Paris was on the 19th Prairial, " the 
day before the Fete-de-r£tre Supreme, at which 
Robespierre, dressed in a sky-blue coat,-^ carrying 
a bunch of ripe wheat — some say flowers — made his 
last public appearance." 

Madame de La Fayette's prison was Le Petit 
Force. -*^ On the 22d Prairial " began the terreur 
dans le terreur. . . . All were in danger, Madame 
de La Fayette perhaps in the greatest of all, for her 
name was enough to damn her with any committee." 
Bad as La Force was, it was less so than Le Plessis, 
whither Madame de La Fayette was soon taken. This 
was her husband's old college. It was a half-way place 
to the Conciergerie — ^vestibule of death. While at Le 
Plessis she was called upon to tell her cousin, the 
Duchesse de Duras, daughter of " Mme. Etiquette," 
of the guillotining of her parents. Soon thereafter it 
was the turn of the Duchesse de Duras to be the bearer 
of bad news. She handed to Madame de La Fayette 
a scrawl, received by her, announcing the execution 

** According to Lamartine ("History of the Girondists;' 
vol. ii, p. 208), Robespierre's chamber held a bed with blue 
damask cover ornamented with white flowers, a table, four 
straw-bottomed chairs and deal shelves for his books. Those 
in evidence were apt to be Rousseau or Racine. " His white, 
powdered hair turned up in clusters over his temples, a bright 
blue coat, butto*ned over his hips, opened over the breast to 
display a white vest, short yellow-colored breeches, white 
stockings and shoes with silver buckles formed his invariable 
costume during the whole of his public life." 

^*This famous building had, in the Middle Ages, been 
known as the Hotel du Roi de Sicile, but it took its present 
name from the fact of its belonging to Cumont, Due de la 
Force, whose property it became in 1700. Fifty-four years 
later Necker made it what was considered a " Model Prison."— 
" Madame de La Fayette and Her Family." 

3S3 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

of the three ladies of the Hotel de Noailles. It would 
be difificult to determine which cup were the bitterer — 
that from which La Fayette drank in his Olmutz dun- 
geon or the one at the lips of his wife in her tiny 
garret five stories up at Le Plessis, looking between 
iron bars at the roofs and towers of unhappy Paris. 

All things end. Robespierre was dead. Two men 
from the Committee of General Safety — Bourdon de 
rOise and Legendre — visited Le Plessis and set the 
prisoners free. Last of all w^as Madame de La Fay- 
ette. When asked who she was, she said : '' La femme 
La Fayette." They said her case was exceptional, and 
took it before the Committee. James Monroe, who 
had succeeded Gouverneur Morris as American Minis- 
ter, did all he could to expedite her release. With his 
wife he visited her in prison. She was sent from 
Le Plessis to the Rue des Amandiers and then to the 
Maison Delmas, in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs. 
Crawford says that, in the Rue des Amandiers — street 
of the almond trees — she was brow^beaten and insulted 
by some West Indian planters there because her hus- 
band had championed the poor blacks of that part of 
the world! It was a terrible winter, that of 1794-95, 
for Madame de La Fayette. In her room '' everything 
was frozen," and it is a wonder she survived. 

Thanks to Monroe, to Mme. Beauchet and to the 
persistent Mme. de Duras, Legendre gave in — and on 
the 2d Pluviose (January 22d, 1795) Madame de La 
Fayette was released. Thanks, also, to Boissy d'Anglas, 
of the new Committee of Public Safety, a passport 
was obtained for herself — " Citoyen Motier " — and 
another for M. Frestel, who was to accompany George 
Washington La Fayette to America. Madame de La 
Fayette then took a cabriolet for Auvergne. On the 
way she saw a man and woman trudging along the 
roadside path — moneyless, wrecked by the Revolution. 

384 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

It was her sister, Mme. de Grammont, with her hus- 
band. With tears raining, the sun of joy broke through 
the clouds. At Clermont, Madame de La Fayette 
looked after her daughters and many who needed help ; 
then she returned to Paris, secured her passports and 
set out for Olmutz. 

America was the destination named in the pass- 
ports. Madame de La Fayette, with Anastasie and 
Virginie, took passage at Dunkirk for Hamburg. This 
was on September 5, 1795; about a week later they 
landed at Altona, where there was a tear-compelling 
reunion with a sister, Mme. de Montagu, and an aunt, 
Mme. de Tesse. At Hamburg, John Parish, the 
American Consul, became their friend in need. He 
smoothed their way towards Vienna, where the Com- 
tesse de Rumbeck obtained for '' Madame Motier " 
an audience with Prince de Rosemberg, Grand Cham- 
berlain, who in turn took her to the Emperor. 

Mme. de La Fayette asked that she be allowed to 
share her husband's cell. 

" I grant it to you," said he ; " as for his liberty, 
that would be impossible. My hands are tied.-' You 
will find M. de La Fayette well treated. I hope you 
will do me justice. Your presence will give him fresh 
satisfaction. Anyhow, you will be pleased with the 
Commanding Officer. In jail the prisoners are only 
distinguished by their numbers ; but, as for your hus- 
band, his name is well known." 

Leaving Vienna by post on October i, 1795, she 
saw the steeples of Olmutz on the second day. At the 
prison " they were admitted through the first door, 
which was locked even on the guard. They passed 
through long, gloomy stone passages, a veritable laby- 
rinth of seeming catacombs . '. . then . . . 
came the last locked door." 

^ " Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," p. 260. 
25 385 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Never had La Fayette been so surprised. He was 
overwhelmed with joy. He did not even know whether 
his wife and children still lived. He had heard terrible 
things in spite of his entombment. And here, as from 
Heaven, come down into his living grave, those whom 
he loved most of all on earth. 

Much that La Fayette burned to know could not 
be brought out in the presence of the guards ; but when 
left alone with his wife — Anastasie and Virginie were 
lodged in an adjoining cell — he learned from her the 
long story of one more fearfully harassed than Pene- 
lope, and as admirable as she in her manifold qualities 
of heroism. 

La Fayette's two rooms were in an old convent 
barracks of the Jesuits. One which was vaulted, says 
Crawford, was twelve feet high, and twenty-four feet 
long, by sixteen wide, and opened into a similar room 
used as an antechamber. These were lighted by a 
window, eight by four, one in either apartment, and 
which was covered by massive wire gratings to prevent 
escape. . . . What made these rooms so unbear- 
able was the fact that all the sewers drained into the 
moat, which was shallow, sometimes dry, and every 
change of air brought with it fearful odors. The 
guards held their noses when they brought in the food. 
A bed, a table, some chairs, a chest of drawers, and a 
stove made up the furniture. Latour Maubourg and 
de Pusy had each a servant two or three hours daily ; 
but La Fayette's had been cut of¥ at the time of his 
attempted flight. 

Mme. de La Fayette at once began a campaign for 
the betterment of conditions, but met with only slight 
response. Nevertheless she was happy. By means of 
toothpicks and India ink, she wrote a life of her mother, 
the Duchesse d'Ayen. Crawford assures us that she 

386 




CORPORAL COLOMBA. LA FAYETTE'S JAILER AT 
OLMUTZ PRISON 

From a sketch made in the cell by LaFayette's daughter, Anastasie, 
on her finger-nail, transferred to a sheet of paper and afterwards 
copied by her. Corporal Colomba was nick-named "Cataquois." 
"His half-bald head is uncovered," says Cloquet, "his few remain- 
ing hairs are collected in a little queae, which is ludicrously turned 
aside over his shoulder, and he advances with the stealthy pace of 
a timid individual who lends an attentive ear to some fancied noise." 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

used for paper the margins left on the engravings of 
a volume of Bufifon. 

La Fayette read aloud to his family. Anastasie 
took down his dictation, and even made shoes for him. 
She sketched furtively, on her thumb-nail, a likeness 
of their jailer, and afterwards transferred it to paper. 

A plan was devised of communicating musically 
with MM. Maubourg and de Pusy. By means of a 
cipher, " Airs of the Pont Neuf " played on a reed 
conveyed certain messages to their friends in other parts 
of the dungeon. 

Because the foul air made her ill, Madame de La 
Fayette asked permission to go to Vienna for treat- 
ment. She could go, was the reply; but not return. 
So she refused to go. 

The prison doctor knew no French. He talked in 
Latin and La Fayette found that he, too, could use the 
ancient tongue. Madame de La Fayette " had a violent 
eruption on her arms, which swelled in such a manner, 
and to such a size, that it was impossible to lift, or even 
move, them at all. Later she had a repetition of the 
eruption in her legs, and was never without fever." 
Such was her pitiful condition from October, 1796, 
to September, 1797. 

Let it not be thought that the world had ceased 
to think of La Fayette. His many friends in England 
agitated so successfully that eloquent pleas in his behalf 
were made in the House of Commons.^^ Nor did 
Washington, however guarded his moves, cease to work 
for his friend's release through such capable agents as 

^ " A solemn and vehement discussion " took place in the 
House of Commons in March, 1794, and another on December 
16, 1796, over the Olmutz prisoners. La Fayette's champions, 
next to Fox, who led in the Parliamentary combat, " fought 
in the face of Europe," were his old foes, Fitzpatrick, Tarle- 
ton and Grey. Wilberforce and Sheridan supported them. Pitt, 
Burke and Windham opposed. The vote in 1794 was 40 for, 
153 against; in 1796 the vote was 32 for, 132 against. 

387 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Monroe and Parish. Washington also addressed a 
strong letter to the Emperor of Austria, who, how- 
ever, had admitted to Madame de La Fayette that his 
hands were tied.-^ But Vienna all at once sent the 

^'■* The treatment of La Fayette by the allied monarchs, 
like the partition of Poland and other great acts of despotic 
infamy, has been viewed by writers of all nations and parties 
with sentiments of unmingled reprobation. Even Sir Walter 
Scott, barren as he is of facts, and parsimonious as he is of 
justice in all that concerns La Fayette, even Sir Walter Scott 
censures this conduct as indicating a littleness of spirit dis- 
graceful in a prince, and at war with morality, the laws of 
nations and sound policy . . . Little could General Lafayette 
have anticipated such perfidy . . _."— Jared Sparks, in his 
" Life of Gouverneur Morris," vol. i, p. 398. 

This is the way La Fayette himself put it in a letter to 
William Short, American Minister to The Hague : " I could 
have found a high station in the new order of things, without 
even having meddled with a plot But my feelings did not 
admit of such an idea. I raised an opposition^ to Jacobin 
tyranny, but you know the weakness of our honnetes gens. I 
was abandoned ; the army gave way to clubbish acts. Nothing 
was left for me but to leave France . . . You will greatly 
oblige me by setting out for Brussels as soon as this reaches 
you, and insist on seeing me. I am an American citizen, an 
American officer, no more in the French service. . . ." — 
Letter of August 26th, from Nivelles. 

" But M. de La Fayette," wrote Gouverneur Morris to 
Minister Short (September 12th) " is a Frenchman, and it is as 
a Frenchman that he is taken and is to be treated. The enemy 
may consider him as a prisoner of war, as a deserter, or as 
a spy." 

Thomas Pinckney, Minister at London, wrote that he did 
not think La Fayette's claim to American citizenship would 
help him. All referred the matter to President Washington, 
who appealed to the Emperor of Austria. 

Meantime, Morris tried to bring pressure to bear upon 
the King of Prussia, through Mme. de La Fayette. Morris 
nobly stood by in the whole affair. He gave his money — risked 
his life, indeed ; for he was seized and haled before a tribunal 
in Paris. Again he was arrested in the country. Apologies 
followed, but the damage was there, 

In December, 1796, we find Morris in Vienna, interceding 
with the Baron de Thugut for La Fayette, and writing in an 
encouraging vein to Madame de La Fayette. Whether at Berlin 
or Hamburg, he lost no opportunity to befriend the Olmutz 
sufferers. Sparks says (vol. i, p. 458), alluding to Morris' im- 
pression that it was he who had procured the release of the 
prisoners : 

" After all, we may probably take the following to be the 
true state of the case : The condition of the prisoners at 

388 



FIVE YEARS IN DUNGEON DEPTHS 

Marquis de Chasteler to Olmutz. If the three State 
prisoners would agree not to return to France they 
might have their liberty. But they refused to give up 
their rights as Frenchmen, and Chasteler went back 

4 

as he had come. Then somebody else was heard from — 
a man with a great voice, a winner of victories. 

Napoleon sent La Fayette's former aide-de-camp, 
Louis Romeuf, from Italy to Vienna, demanding the 
release of the three men. They were to be exchanged 
for Princess Marie Therese. Such was subsequently 
a stipulation in the Treaty of Campo Formio, sisfned 
October 17, 1797. 

But it was on September 19, 1797, that the chains 
and creaking doors and foul stenches of Olmutz were 
left behind. La Fayette had been a prisoner for five 
years and one month. His wife and daughters had 
shared his dungeon for twenty-three months. 

When the three prisoners came face to face for the 
first time in three years La Fayette looked more like 
himself than either of the others. His family had 
brightened his life even though he had his " prison 
look," but Maubourg and de Pusy were thin and 
woebegone. As soon as possible the party set out 
for Hamburg. At Dresden it was joined by Mme. de 
Maubourg, with two children; and Mme. de Pusy 
with a live-year-old daughter whom her father now 
saw for the first time. 

Their arrival at Hamburg is described by John 
Parish, the American Consul, who says : 

Olmutz was discussed at Leoben. Bonaparte requested their 
release, which was readily granted, since M. Thugut had de- 
clared to Mr. Morris that they would be naturally given up at 
the peace. They must not be regarded, however, in the light 
of prisoners of war, for these were not discharged till after 
the definitive treaty of Campo Formio, whereas La Fayette 
was released a month before the signature of that treaty." 

389 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" The Marquis' departure from Olmutz was notified 
to Monsieur De Bual ^° and myself, and I concerted 
measures for his being deHvered over to me in my 
own house. Everything was arranged so as to have the 
ceremony performed as quietly and secretly as possible, 
and the 4th of October was fixed "for their being 
conveyed to my house. 

*' Mr. Morris and I dined that day with the Minis- 
ter, the Baron de Buol. I left them at four o'clock 
in order to be at home when they arrived. An immense 
crowd of people announced their arrival. The streets 
were lined and my house was soon filled with them. 
A lane was formed to let the prisoners pass to my room. 
La Fayette led the way and was followed by his infirm 
lady and two daughters. He flew into my arms ; his 
wife and daughters clung to me. A silence — an expres- 
sive silence took place. It was broken by the exclama- 
tions of — * My friend! My dearest friend! My 
deliverer ! See the work of your generosity ! My 
poor, poor wife, hardly able to support herself ! ' And 
indeed she was not standing, but hanging on my arm 
imbrued with tears, while her two lovely girls had hold 
of each other. The scene was extremely affecting and 
I was very much agitated. The room was full and I am 
sure there was not a dry eye in it. I placed the 
Marchioness upon a sofa; she sobbed and wept much 
and could utter but few words. Again the Marquis 
came to my arms, his heart overflowing with gratitude. 
I never saw a man in such complete ecstasy of body 
and mind. He is a very handsome man, in the prime 
of life, and seemed to have suffered but little from his 
confinement. It required a good quarter of an hour 
to compose him." 

^° Baron De Buol, his Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary 
to the Princes and State of Lower Saxony. 



IX 

IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

La Fayette, Maubourg and de Pusy sent their 
grateful acknowledgments to Bonaparte, who, having 
dictated the Treaty of Campo Formio, returned to 
Paris, whence he departed (May, 1798) on his bold 
Egyptian expedition. But the thanks to Bonaparte 
displeased the Directory. In petty spite, they revenged 
themselves on La Fayette by selling a large part of his 
property in Bretagne. His Auvergne possessions were 
gone by an earlier confiscation, except the Chavaniac 
house and a few acres around it. He also still owned 
the undeveloped South American estate in which he had 
invested in execution of his plan for the betterment 
of the blacks. All things considered — debts, deprecia- 
tions, sequestrations — he was a ruined man. And this, 
too, in spite of his wife's money and management. 

But he still had solicitous and obliging friends. In 
fact, his fame had brought them down from the skies — 
so to say. Poor as he was at this period, it was a 
heaven-send when a Mrs. Edwards, an Englishwoman, 
bequeathed to him as a tribute to his " virtuous and 
noble character " the sum of one thousand pounds.^ 
A year later another similar legacy for three thousand 
pounds was delivered to him. 

But the best friend of all was Mme. de La Fayette's 
aunt, Mme. de la Comtesse de Tesse, sister of the 
Due d'Ayen. She had brought money enough out of 
France to buy a cattle-farm in Holstein ; she, a Noailles, 
" sold milk " ; and now she invited the La Fayettes 
to her home at Wittmold, on Lake Ploen. They 

^ " Life of General La Fayette," by Bayard Tuckerman, 
vol. ii, p. 141. 

391 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

reached Wittmold on December ist, and George Wash- 
ington La Fayette, who had been summoned from 
America, arrived in February, 1798. It was a winter 
of many reunions and much happiness. Among the 
guests was Charles La Tour Maubourg, younger 
brother of the Olmutz prisoner. Charles fell in love 
with Anastasie and they, were married, on May 5th, 
in Lhemkuln castle on Mme. de Tesse's estate, whither 
the La Fayettes had removed. It was also a winter of 
many letters. Among the correspondents were Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Fox, Fitzpatrick and 
Masclet. Madame de Stael wrote : " Come directly 
to France ; there is no other country for you." 
And again : " Come to France ; there you will find 
devoted friends." 

So, after the wedding, Madame de La Fayette made 
bold to journey thither. She had a definite object — and 
that object was to help her husband rebuild a new home 
on the ruins of the old. That meant, too, the settle- 
ment of his debts by such recoveries of his own prop- 
erty as she could arrange, and by the sale of property 
that had come to her through the de Noailles family. 
Anastasie and young de Maubourg went with her to 
the home of the Maubourgs in Holland; and then, 
accompanied by Virginie, this sterling woman proceeded 
to Paris. Chavaniac was visited by her also; and 
the whole adventure was regarded as successful, in 
that it paved the way for an early return of the 
family to France. 

But about this time, early in 1799, the Batavian 
Republic (now Holland) offered the La Fayettes an 
asylum in the town of Vianen, near Utrecht. Holstein 
was tolerant; Holland, hospitable. La Fayette wrote 
from Utrecht to his friend Masclet:- "Here I find 

' Among the many men in London who had labored un- 
ceasingly to bring about La Fayette's release was a newspaper 
writer who signed himself " Eleuthere " (freeman). He wrote 

392 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

good institutions and opinions ; civil and religious lib- 
erty; the government having good intentions and the 
governed knowing their rights and duties." In a 
word, the La Fayettes would have been as happy here 
as anywhere out of France but for the unsettled state 
of their affairs and certain obligations that weighed 
upon them. They rejoiced in the birth of their 
first grandchild — Celestine de Maubourg, and for 
the first time in eight years Mme. de La Fayette, 
much worn by her trials and greatly aged, was 
re-united with her sisters — Madame de Grammont 
and Madame de Montagu. 

Then, once more, Madame de La Fayette went to 
Paris on business for her husband. She saw Director 
Sieyes — very different from the Sieyes of old — and 
urged that La Fayette be granted permission to return 
to France. But the ruling power was deaf to her plea. 

La Fayette and his wife were both in distress about 

so many letters, in behalf of La Fayette, that when they had 
been clipped (from the London Morning Chronicle and the 
Dutch and Hamburg journals) and pasted in a scrap-book it 
took M. Jules Cloquet a month to read them. If one could 
speak respectfully and admiringly of a satellite, then one 
would be tempted to thus designate Masclet. He was one of 
nme poor children, a native of Douai, and received at Douai 
College a bourse (government privilege) for the College of 
Louis le Grand. He excelled in Greek. He aimed to try his 
luck in literature, but was forced to take arms, was proscribed, 
and finally, on the eve of his intended departure with Talley- 
rand, from London for America, became the captive of a 
Scotch woman, a widow, Madame Zornlin (nee Wilson), whom 
he married. *' Eleuthere " was unacquainted with La Fayette. 
It was the hard and cruel fate of a liberator who had done so 
much for mankind, and who was capable of doing so much 
more, that caused him to become his hero's champion, year in 
and year out. 

La Fayette was touched to the heart by Masclet's devotion. 
Masclet journeyed to Holstein in 1798 to meet La Fayette, 
the interview was unforgettable. " La Fayette kept his eyes 
intently and constantly fixed " upon the other's face. At 
seventy-three, Masclet wept in telling of it. The two remained 
close friends for life. Masclet became French consul at Nice. 
His wife fell from a carriage, and died from her injuries. 
Soon thereafter (in 1832) Masclet died. 

393 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

their debts, or rather his debts — especially the Ameri- 
can, or Gouverneur Morris, debts. Those obligations 
were incurred on account of La Fayette's patriotic 
sacrifices. They were the penalty he paid for con- 
spicuousness ; for opposition to bloody and brutal fac- 
tion ; for daring, instead of skulking, in time of public 
tumult. As we know, he staked what we on this side, 
in our liberty books, designate as " his life, his fortune 
and his sacred honor." It was no idle oratorical phrase 
to La Fayette. He threw in everything; his powerful 
enemies had no compunctions as to robbing him — much 
less mercy for him or his. But la femme La Fayette 
took hold of his affairs; and through her sister, 
Madame Montagu, who visited Morris, obtained the 
loan of 10,000 livres mentioned in the Madgebourg 
letters. That was one debt easily satisfied ; for Con- 
gress agreed to turn over to Morris La Fayette's back 
pay, never drawn, as a Major-General in the American 
service, which amounted to a similar sum. But there 
was a loan ten times as big which Morris in the tender- 
ness of his heart — and he was a real man, pegleg and 
all ; a splendid man — pitying Madame de La Fayette in 
the calamitous crisis of her husband's overwhelming, 
made to her in order that she might meet pressing obli- 
gations. She offered him a mortgage ; but he could not 
permit himself to take it, so sympathetic was he in that 
hour of her deepest distress. He stood for America, as 
well as for an honorable high manhood, typified in his 
own j>erson. This was the debt that the Lafayettes now 
endeavored to pay. Madame de La Fayette conferred 
in Paris in regard to it with Leray de Chaumont, 
Morris's agent. Bayard Tuckerman, who went to the 
bottom of the matter, without bias, if a biographer can 
be without bias, says : 

" In all the financial proceedings which La Fayette 
was now conducting for the settlement of his estate, 

394 




(, \EUR MORRIS 

From the painting by Chappel 
From the "National Portrait Gallery" by Evert A. Duychinck 

He was born in 1752 and died in 1816. He was the author of our decimal 
system of money, one of the makers of the Federal Constitution and 
Minister to France. The LaFayettes found him "a friend in need." 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

the depreciation of the currency was involved. Pay- 
ments made in coin were universally regulated in 
accordance with calculations of the former and actual 
values of the assignats which were legal tender at the 
time of the debt. La Fayette, like all his countrymen, 
being in the habit of taking into account the matter 
of depreciation, applied to his debt to Morris the same 
principles which were recognized in France. But 
Morris, in America, ignorant of his debtor's bankrupt 
state, and accustomed to a business atmosphere very 
different from that of France, became indignant. ' This 
stickling for depreciation is quite shocking,' he wrote 
to Leray de Chaumont. ... La Fayette's record 
of integrity and disinterestedness should not be forgot- 
ten. He was doing his best to satisfy all his creditors. 
The sum of 100,000 livres loaned by Morris to Mme. de 
La Fayette had been paid to her in the assignats. 
Hence it was not improper for a debtor who intended 
to pay in coin to consider what value the paper money 
had at the time of the loan. . . . Morris made his 
loan to Mme. de La Fayette in November, 1793. He 
claimed that he could have bought real estate in Paris 
at a price which would have made his assignats worth 
par to him. This was true, as revolutionary anarchy 
had depreciated the value of real estate. In a letter 
to Washington of July 25th, 1794, he said that at the 
time of his loan ' the assignats were at par, or, indeed, 
for silver under par.' There was, therefore, a reason 
for applying to this debt the same scale of reduction 
that was applied without objection to the French debts, 
especially as the La Fayettes had not the means to pay 
100,000 livres in coin. Leray de Chaumont inquired 
of Mme. de La Fayette: * Suppose he (Morris) had 
made the useless ceremony to convert his assignats in 
lignots (bullion) to lend them to you; what would you 
pay now, lignots merely?' * Yes.' When Morris 
insisted that the assignats which he had advanced were 
worth par to him, as he could have invested them in 
real estate at that rate. La Fayette and his wife with- 
drew the claim for depreciation and proceeded with 
their efforts to pay as much of the debt as they could. 
. . . * From the last advices I have received,' Morris 
wrote to John Parish, in February, 1803, * it appears 

395 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

that M. de La Fayette means to liquidate what he owes 
me by something less than the interest of it. To this 
he reduces the principal down pretty low by the scale 
of depreciation. God forgive him, and, if possible, 
reconcile him to himself. He must have odd notions, 
if, with the consciousness of facts, some meditation be 
not necessary between his mind and his conscience.' 
Here Morris was unjust. La Fayette and his wife had 
withdrawn the question of depreciation on Morris's 
claim that his assignats had been worth par to him, and 
had been accumulating all their available means to pay 
their debt. The full payment was not a question of con- 
science, but of possibility. La Fayette, so reduced as 
to be able to begin his farming with but one plough, 
could not raise a hundred thousand livres. Morris 
finally realized this and consented to take in settlement 
of his claim the fifty-three thousand livres in gold 
which the La Fayettes had scraped together. . . . 
La Fayette was before the public eye, and subject to 
constant criticism, for fifty-eight years. During that 
time no other complaint was made that his conduct 
in business matters erred otherwise than on the side of 
excessive disinterestedness." 

With this we may well quit a subject that is dis- 
agreeable at best. If we cannot blame La Fayette, we 
certainly cannot blame Gouverneur Morris, except to 
say that he hardly made allowance enough for a man 
reeling under cruel blows of fortune. Possibly the 
La Fayettes had a subconscious feeling that America •' 
owed its friend in need many times 100,000 livres and 
possibly they felt that Morris would eventually be reim- 
bursed by Congress. Not long afterward Congress did 

^ To La Fayette indeed, America owes as much as to any 
of her own children, for his devotion to us was as disinterested 
and sincere as it was effective ; and it is a pleasant thing to 
remember that we, in our turn, not only repaid him materially, 
but, what he valued far more, that our whole people yielded 
him all his life long the most loving homage a man could re- 
ceive. No man ever kept pleasanter relations with a people 
he had helped than La Fayette did with us. — "Gouverneur 
Morris," by Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 85-86. 

396 




LAGRANGE— MAIN ENTRANCE TO, THE CHATEAU 




LA GRANGE— VIEW OF THE CHATEAU FROM THE LAWN 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

vote La Fayette 1 1,520 acres of land on the Ohio, which 
was subsequently changed to a tract in Louisiana. But 
when the city of New Orleans claimed the same tract, 
La Fayette refused to disturb it. Years after, the 
loss was more than made up to him. 

Sieyes was not only different from the Sieyes of old, 
but other men and other things in Paris had by this 
time undergone great changes. The Directors, " their 
five Majesties of the Luxembourg," had so mismanaged 
the affairs of France that Sieyes declared : " We must 
have a head — and a sword." He himself meant to be 
the head ; but, of a sudden, by the Revolution of the 
i8th and 19th of Brumaire (November 9th and loth, 
1799) Bonaparte assumed a supremacy that was to last 
fourteen years. x\nd when the news reached Utrecht 
that city gave the password for the night : " Liberty, 
Paris and La Fayette." 

Madame de La Fayette, then in Paris, procured 
a passport for her husband, and sent it post-haste by 
M. Alexis Marboeuf. So La Fayette, rejoicing, set 
out for the land he loved. He. put up in Paris at the 
house of the Marquis de Mun ; ^ but soon passed on. 
At last he and his wife and children reached their 
goal — their new home — Lagrange-Bleneau, " in the 
department of the Seine-et-Marne, thirteen leagues 
from Paris, near Rosnay in Brie, and about half-way 
from Melun to Meaux." From this time on till we part 
with them we shall find the La Fayettes resident at 
this spot. 

Lagrange was willed to Mme. de La Fayette by her 
mother. It had many visitors during La Fayette's life 
there. Charles James Fox, Lady Morgan, Dr. Jules 
Cloquet and Professor Carter were among these visi- 

■^Adrien de Mun, M. le Marquis de Mun, Member of the 
Chamber of Deputies. 

397 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

tors ; and some of them wrote illuminatingly concern- 
ing it. Carter says : 

" Lagrange was formerly a fortified baronial castle, 
and notwithstanding the modifications it has undergone 
much of its antique and feudal character still remains. 
It was once surrounded by a deep moat, most sections 
of which, filled with water, have been preserved and the 
residue filled up either for the sake of health or con- 
venience. The edifice consists of a centre, perhaps a 
hundred feet in length, with two wings of about the 
same dimensions and joining it at right angles. From 
traces still visible a gallery evidently extended across 
at the extremity of the wings, enclosing a quadrangular 
courtyard, strongly defended, with only one entrance 
under a lofty arch in the northern wall guarded by a 
portcullis. The chateau is three stories high, plainly 
constructed of a hard and dark colored stone, rendered 
of a deeper hue by its venerable age and long exposure 
to the climate. Two Gothic towers of a conical shape 
rise from the ends of each of the wings, and form 
almost its only ornament." 

Such is the set description of Lagrange ; but, neces- 
sarily, the spirit of the place is to be caught only by 
seeing it with the mind's eye in its charm of green 
fields, lawns, bright gardens, winding waters (deep 
enough for boating) , willows, evergreens and festoons 
of ivy on the facade of the chateau. Fox planted the 
ivy, while a guest. All told, there were 800 acres 
attached to Lagrange, and it was with these that La 
Fayette began life anew. He had ideas of his own 
about farming. He believed that he could make the 
place a model of industry, of profit, of contentment. 
Like Washington, he was interested keenly in agricul- 
tural development. He especially felt that France 
needed enterprise in this particular; and it was a joy 
to him to be out and about in field and orchard. Let 
it be remembered that Lagrange, neglected and dilapi- 
dated, had to be built up from the very bottom. The 
chateau was without furniture ; the farm without stock. 

398 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

M. and Mme. de La Fayette felt justified in withhold- 
ing from their creditors the money sent them by sympa- 
thetic strangers and in using it to rehabihtate them- 
selves. Such rehabilitation meant that Lagrange might 
in time help them in their efforts to emerge from bank- 
ruptcy. Also, as the two daughters were dower- 
less and as the son was without allowance, it was 
felt that there should be a roof under which they 
could be welcomed. 

And now for Bonaparte. What was La Fayette's 
status under the new government? Upon his arrival 
in Paris, La Fayette wrote to both Bonaparte and 
Sieyes. The latter, who but a little while before had 
been displeased, was pleasant now — because he felt 
the need of such liberal backing as La Fayette might 
afford. On the contrary, Bonaparte brought his brows 
together. He had his doubts concerning this lover of 
liberty. " People jealous of Bonaparte," wrote La 
Fayette to his wife, ** see in me his future opponent ; 
they are right if he wishes to suppress liberty, but if 
he have the good sense to promote it, I will suit him 
in every respect. I do not believe him to be so foolish 
as to wish to be only a despot." He spoke of the Con- 
sulate as " a restorative dictatorship — an occasion for 
washing away the outrages of the reactionaries." 
Bonaparte did not see fit to hide his disapproval of 
La Fayette's return. He would have sent him back to 
Utrecht in short order if he had felt secure in his seat. 
But he still had much to do in the way of fortifying 
himself in power. So he simply said that if La Fay- 
ette " should expose himself to the danger of being 
taken by the English the coalition would never give 
him up." He received Mme. de La Fayette with con- 
sideration when she called upon him.^ " I know best, 

° ** Madame de La Fayette," by M. MacDermot Craw- 
ford, p. 298. 

399 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Madame," said he, " what is to be done in his (La Fay- 
ette's) interests; I beg of him to avoid ah eclat. Je 
n'enrapporte dson patriotisme . . . I am charmed, 
Madame, to make your acquaintance ; vous avcz beau- 
coup d' esprit, mais vous nentendez pas les affaires." 

Reduced to a few words, Bonaparte was willing to 
be friends if La Fayette would keep out of his way and 
out of the public mind. This public mind was to be 
occupied by Bonaparte himself. He wanted no rivalry, 
no criticism, no nonsense as to liberty. 

With Latour Maubourg, La Fayette went to the 
Tuileries. When Bonaparte greeted him, it was with a 
laugh. " I don't know what the devil you have done 
to the Powers," said he, " but they found it very hard 
to let you go." 

During another Tuileries visit, La Fayette met 
Joseph Bonaparte, who invited him to go to Morte- 
fontaine, w^here a new treaty with the United States 
was to be signed. This was for La Fayette an occasion 
of great enjoyment, and he again talked with Napoleon, 
who said : 

*' You must have found the French looking very 
coldly upon liberty." 

" Yes, but they are now in a condition to receive 
it," ventured La Fayette. 

" They are much disgusted — the Parisians, for 
example. Oh ! the shopkeepers want no more of it." 

" It is not lightly. General, that I have used this 
word, * liberty.' I do not ignore the efifect of the crimes 
and follies wich have profaned the name of liberty; 
but the French are, perhaps, more than ever in a state 
to receive it. It is for you to give it. It is from you 
that it is expected." 

They fell to talking of the American Revolution. 
La Fayette said : " There the greatest interests of the 
universe were decided by encounters between patrols." 

400 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

La Fayette said that there had been talk of a 
Hfe presidency in America.^ At this Bonaparte's 
eyes sparkled. 

" You must admit that that would not do here," he 
said, quickly. 

La Fayette successfully put in a plea for some of 
the proscribed, including Mme. de Tesse and her hus- 
band. In fact Bonaparte, having sounded La Fayette, 
and having found out for himself that he was no 
intriguer, now began to seek his support. Through 
M. Cabanis he was offered, and declined, a senatorship. 
This offer was repeated by Talleyrand, who also sug- 
gested that Bonaparte would be pleased to send La 
Fayette to the United States. 

" Nobody likes to pass for a tyrant," said 
Bonaparte ; " General La Fayette seems to consider 
me such." 

But La Fayette laughed off all offers, including one 
as General Councillor of Haute-Loire. He said he was 
like the boy who refused to say "A" because he would 
immediately be importuned to say " B." ^ 

Bonaparte talked to him about the Bourbons. He 
said : *' They promise me a statue by which I shall be 
represented delivering the crown to the King. I 
answered that I feared to be shut up in the pedestal. 
. . . You know that for us this danger is nothing; 
but to restore them to power would be an infamous 
act of cowardice on my part. You may disapprove this 
government, think me a despot. We shall see. You 
will see some day whether I am working for myself or 
posterity. I am the master of this government — I, 
whom the Revolution, whom you, whom all patriots 
have placed where I am ; and if I brought those people 

® " Life of General La Fayette," by Bayard Tuckerman, 
vol. ii, p. 152. 

'^Tuckerman: " Life of La Fayette." 
26 401 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

here it would be to deliver you all to their vengeance." 

La Fayette was impressed. He took Bonaparte by 
the hand and showed him appreciation and pleasure 
and good-will. 

The two were getting along famously. 

" I am well hated and others also by these princes 
and their followers," said Bonaparte, later ; *' but, bah ! 
all that is nothing to their hatred of you. I have been 
in a position to see it. I would not have believed that 
human hatred could go so far ! What the devil ! Did the 
republicans think their cause separate from yours? 
But now they do you justice — oh, yes, a complete jus- 
tice ! . . . General La Fayette, you have over- 
thrown the strongest monarchy that existed. Look at 
all those of Europe ! Ours, in spite of its faults, was 
the best constituted. It was a fine and bold enterprise ; 
but you made a great mistake in such a revolution to 
preserve the old dynasty; for in denying it all power, 
the government could not work, and if you gave it 
power it would use that against yourselves. The prob- 
lem was insoluble." 

Again there was a little scene between the two in 
Bonaparte's cabinet. La Fayette sought the interview 
to intercede for a friend and the intercession was suc- 
cessful. At parting Bonaparte said, good-humoredly : 

" You still feel yourself too active to be a Senator." 

" It is not that, but I believe that retirement suits 
me best." 

Bonaparte did not relish this reply. La Fayette 
quickly noted the other's displeasure, and said : 

*' Allow me to speak to you again on a point con- 
cerning which I do not wish to leave a wrong impres- 
sion. I desire to repeat to you that after the circum- 
stances of a stormy life, my shipwreck, and all that 
you know of me, you should find it natural and proper 
that I live as a simple citizen in the bosom of my family. 

402 



' IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

I should already have asked for military retirement if 
I had not wished that my companions should attain 
it before me." 

This pleased Bonaparte. La Fayette, he said, could 
retire if he wished and his friends should be taken 
care of.^ 

Bonaparte continued his watchfulness of La Fay- 
ette. When news came of Washington's death, a fes- 
tival was arranged in honor of the great American. 
On the same day, February 9, 1800, the standards 
taken at Aboukir were placed ceremoniously in the 
Invalides. It might have been thought that La Fay- 
ette, as the great Frenchman associated with the great- 
est American, would be brought forward. A generous 
Bonaparte would have done so, but not this jealous 
Bonaparte of 1800. The orators dared not even refer 
to La Fayette. Sloane ^ says : " Since Bonaparte had 
made the liberation of La Fayette an indispensable con- 
dition of the treaty ratified at Campo Formio, it might 
have been expected that this name, so long used else- 
where in natural juxtaposition, would have been men- 
tioned in connection with that of Washington, but the 
honors of the day were to be shared with the dead 
foreigner, not with the living Frenchman." 

However great Bonaparte may have grown, subse- 
quently, in the school of experience, he at this time 
revealed the lack of masterfulness in many ways, and 
on at least one critical occasion — that of his own acces- 
sion as First Consul. But while his inhibition as to 
La Fayette at the Washington festival was ungenerous, 
not to say petty, one may readily gather his motive. 
He understood Talleyrand, the intriguer, but not La 
Fayette, who was Talleyrand's antithesis. He is said 
to have called La Fayette a " ninny " and to have 

^ Tuckerman. 

° " Life of Napoleon Bonaparte," by William Milligan 
Sloane, vol. ii, p. 98. 

403 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

expressed himself as doubtful of his ability ; yet those 
outgivings may have been mendacious — he could decry 
and belittle if it suited his purpose — or mere thought- 
less utterances. He left little undone to win over La 
Fayette; at heart he respected La Fayette; he feared 
La Fayette. Finally he lost patience with him. And 
this was how it happened : Time's whirligig once more 
brought La Fayette and Lord Cornwallis together. It 
was in 1802, at Joseph Bonaparte's dinner-table. La 
Fayette, it seems, spoke with too much looseness of 
tongue concerning his own attitude. Liberty being 
an obsession, he harped upon liberty. 

When Bonaparte next met him, he said : ** I warn 
you that Lord Cornwallis gives out that you are not 
cured yet." "Of what?" said La Fayette; "is it 
of loving liberty? What could have disgusted me 
with it ? The extravagances and crimes of the tyranny 
of the Terror? They only make me hate still more 
every arbitrary system and attach me more and more 
to my principles." 

" I should tell you, General La Fayette," rejoined 
Bonaparte, *' and I see it with regret, that by your 
manner of expressing yourself on the acts of this 
government you give to its enemies the weight of 
your name." 

" What better can I do ? I live in retirement in the 
country; I avoid occasions for speaking; but when- 
ever anyone comes to ask me whether your system is 
conformant to my ideas of liberty I shall answer that 
It is not; for. General, I certainly wish to be prudent 
but I shall not be false." 

" What do you mean by * arbitrary system ' ? Yours 
was not so, I admit, but you had against your adver- 
saries the resource of riots. I was only in the parterre 
when you were on the stage ; but I observed carefully.'* 

" If you call the national insurrection of July, 1789, 
404 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

a riot, I lay claim to that one; but after that period 
I wanted no more. I have repressed many ; many were 
gotten up against me, and since you appeal to my experi- 
ence regarding them, I shall say that in the course of 
the Revolution I saw no injustice, no deviation from 
liberty which did not injure the Revolution itself, 
and finally the authors of those measures. But will you 
not acknowledge that in the state in which I found 
France irregular measures were forced upon me ? " 

*' That is not the question. I speak neither of the 
time nor of such and such an act; it is the tendency 
— yes, General, it is the tendency of which I complain 
and which affects me. After all," concluded Bona- 
parte, ** I have spoken to you as the head of the govern- 
ment, and in this character I have cause to complain of 
you ; but as an individual, I should be content, for in all 
that I hear of you, I have recognized that, in spite of 
your severity towards the acts of the government, there 
has always been, on your part, personal good-will to- 
wards myself." 

Thus this memorable talk that began with a sneer 
and a rebuke ended with a bit of friendly philosophiz- 
ing. One may picture to oneself these two, at the Tuile- 
ries, in the cabinet, elbows on table — the tall man in 
the brown wig still showing trace of his Olmutz pallor ; 
the much smaller man, lean then, and eager, with the 
flash of ambition in his eye. 

Closer togetTier they never got.^® La Fayette was 
for liberty. Bonaparte declaimed " liberty " ; yet, in 
the main, was for a conventional something upon which 
he could impose his stamp. La Fayette voted against 
Bonaparte's Consulate for life," just as, in 1804, he 

"La Fayette did not hesitate to speak of Bonaparte as 
" the greatest foe, considering his circumstances, which liberty 
ever had." 

" "His restrictive vote against the consulship for life broke 
off all further communication between him and Bonaparte, and 

405 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

voted against the imperial title. Some one said in the 
hero's hearing that only Jacobin votes had been cast 
against him; but Bonaparte immediately corrected the 
statement. *' No," said he, " some proceeded from 
enthusiasm for liberty — La Fayette's, for instance." 

La Fayette's vote had been accompanied by this 
written remark. *' I cannot vote for such a Magistracy 
until public liberty has been sufficiently guaranteed; 
then will I give my vote to Napoleon Bonaparte." 

When the treaty of Amiens (March, 1802) had 
been signed, over from England came Fox, Fitz- 
patrick,^- Erskine and other Whigs. Fox at Lagrange 
" begged La Fayette, in the presence of his son, not to 
be too much affected by the necessary delay in the 
attainment of his political objects." La Fayette 
acquiesced. " Liberty," said he, " will be born again, 
but not for us ; for George at most, and surely for his 
children." 

Once more La Fayette withstood Napoleon. It was 
when his cousin, the Comte de Segur, approached him 
with a message from Joseph Bonaparte requesting him 
to become a dignitary of the Legion of Honor. La 
Fayette declined. His persistent offishness now began 
to react upon him in an unexpected quarter. His son 
George, and a young Colonel, Louis, Marquis de Las- 
teyrie du Sallant, who was to become his son-in-law, 
were both made to feel Bonaparte's displeasure. These 

occasioned that noble letter to the First Consul which was 
found in the papers of Mr. Fox, and published in London 
several years since." — " Events in France," Helen Maria 
Williams. 

" " Fitzpatrick, the intimate friend of Fox, and the uncle 
of Lord Holland, was, like Fox, fond of both the classics and 
garnbling. He was an amateur actor and a wit. He had made 
an impressive speech in 1796 in favor of La Fayette, then a 
prisoner in Austria, and now visited him at Lagrange. In 
1806 he became Secretary of War." — "Napoleon's British 
Visitors and Captives, 1801-15," by J. G. Alger. 

406 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

officers found themselves out of favor in the army, not 
because of anything unworthy they had done but 
because of their close connection with La Fayette. It 
was Bonaparte's ^^ way of bringing pressure to bear 
on those whom he sought to control. 

George had been wounded at the battle of Mincio. 
Upon his recovery, he was married at Lagrange to 
Mlle.Emelie de Tracy, daughter of the Comte de Tracy. 
They spent their honeymoon with Mme. de Chavaniac, 
in much-loved Auvergne. At Lagrange, on April 20, 
1803, Virginie became the wife of M. de Lasteyrie, 
son of the noted agriculturist. In bed in the next room 
was La Fayette, but he was lifted to a wheeled chair 
and thus taken to the home of Mme. de Tesse, where 
the wedding festival was held. 

La Fayette had fallen on a slippery pavement and 
had broken his hip. His doctor, M. Cloquet, says:^* 

*' The fractured limb was enclosed in a machine, 
which kept it in a constant state of tension; and, as 
La Fayette had promised those skillful surgeons (Boyer 
and Deschamp) to support the pain with patience as 
long as they might judge it necessary for his cure, 
he uttered not a single complaint for the fifteen or 
twenty days during which the apparatus was applied. 
When it was removed the surgeons were unable to 
conceal the annoyance they felt at the eflect produced 
by the bandages. Deschamp turned pale ; Boyer was 
stupefied. The upper bandages had, by their pressure, 
cut deeply into the muscles of the thigh, and laid bare 
the femoral artery; the action of the lower ones had 
been less violent, but they had produced a mortification 
of the skin at the back part of the foot, and laid bare 
the tendons of the toes. In consequence of La Fay- 

"Once when a report commendatory of the services of 
George was offered him, in a bulletin, he erased it with im- 
patience, saying, : " These La Fayettes cross my path every- 
where." — ^"Marquis de La Fayette," by Robert Wain. 

""Recollections of the Private Life of General La Fay- 
ette," by J. Cloquet, London, 1835. 

407 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

ette's stoical fortitude the vigilance of his surgeons 
was completely at fault. He bore the scars to the day 
of his death." 

" We are all on the rack," wrote Mme. de La Fay- 
ette to Pere Carrichon ; '* beg God that we shall rest 
upon the cross." This mention of Pere Carrichon 
brings up a curious incident. According to Crawford/^ 
a priest wrote to Mme. de La Fayette telling of the dis- 
covery of her mother's burial place. Almost at the 
same time Mme. de Montagu made a similar announce- 
ment. She had heard that a Mile. Paris, a poor lace- 
maker, could tell her; but for a long while searched 
the garrets in vain. At last, four flights up, in the 
faubourg, she found Mile. Paris. Her story was that, 
having as a girl witnessed the guillotining of her father 
and brother, she had, in her dazed and half-hypnotized 
condition, followed the cart from the Place du Trone 
out along the Vincennes road to the old house of the 
Augustine monks at Picpus. There, in a common grave 
in the garden, 1600 victims of the guillotine were buried 
during the last six weeks of the Terror. Picpus, adds 
Crawford, is from Picqiie Puces (flea-bites), because 
in the fifteenth century the monks there found a cure 
for an epidemic in which the body was afflicted with 
reddish swellings such as are left after fleas feast upon 
one. Mile. Paris had gone habitually to Picpus to 
pray. Mme. Montagu and Mme. de La Fayette at once 
sought, but vainly, to induce the owner of the property 
to consecrate the fields. Then they arranged for the 
purchase of the space occupied by the graves, and so 
at last the dead slept in consecrated ground. Thus 
piously did the sisters keep in mind their dear ones, 
who likewise went afield out of the Barriere du Trone. 
Mme. de La Fayette was to sleep there ; but not until 
five happy years had passed. Her anxieties during those 

" *' Madame de La Fayette and Her Family," p. 307. 
408 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

years — La Fayette himself was in contented retire- 
ment — were mainly over George, who at the battle of 
Eylau (fought in a blinding snowstorm) saved his 
General's life. But both George and Louis de Las- 
teyrie resigned from the army and were a great deal 
at Lagrange. With three grandchildren, with many 
visitars, with much daily work to do, with correspond- 
ents in diverse places, with pleasant trips to take away 
down into Auvergne, the La Fayettes found the time 
all too fleeting. 

Suddenly, on August 22d, 1807, Madame de La 
Fayette was " seized with terrible and violent pains 
and high fever." " She was taken first to Aulnay, 
then to Mme. de Tesse's house, in Paris." At times 
she was in delirium. She died on Christmas Eve, in 
her 48th year. 

La Fayette's letter to M. de Latour Maubourg, 
January 8th, 1808, is an extraordinary tribute to his 
much-loved mate.^*^ It contains some 5000 words, and 
gives in detail all the circumstances of her illness, her 
loving utterances, her farewells : 

" During thirty-four years her tenderness, her good- 
ness, the elevation of her mind, charmed, adorned, 
honored my life. ... If I look back to the days 
of my youth, how many unexampled proofs of delicacy 
come to my mind ! She was associated heart and soul 
with all my political wishes and opinions, and Mme. de 
Tesse might well say that her devotion was a mixture 
of the catechism and the Declaration des Droits. . . . 
You know as well as I do, all she was and all she did 
during the Revolution. It is not for having come to 
Olmutz, as Charles James Fox so elegantly expresses 
it, on the wings of duty and of love, that I mean to 
praise her now ; it is for having remained in France 
until she secured, as far as lay in her power, the material 
comforts of my aunt and the rights of my creditors; 

" Printed in full in " Madame de La Fayette and Her 
Family," pp. 318-331. 

409 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

it is for having had the courage to send George to 
America. What noble imprudence to remain the only 
woman in France endangered by the name she bore, 
but who always refused to change it. Each of her peti- 
tions began with these words : La fcmme La Fayette. 
. . . We all surrounded her bed. . . . We knelt 
down. . . . We bathed with tears the remains of 
that adorable being. ... On Monday that angelic 
woman was borne to the spot near which repose her 
grandmother, her mother, her sister, among sixteen 
hundred other victims." 

La Fayette had one of her farewell utterances 
engraved on a gold medallion within whicli was her 
portrait. The words were : Je vous fiis done une douce 
compagne, eh hien! benisses moi!" He wore this 
medallion on a chain about his neck. Her room was 
kept as she had left it. Every Christmas Eve he spent 
alone, thinking of her — ^Noailles-La Fayette, la femme 
La Fayette J Adrienne. 

At fifty (Bonaparte was 33) La Fayette was 
enabled to ride around his farm and plan improvements. 
He had many visitors and received letters from dis- 
tant parts. He was the recipient of gifts from the 
new world and old. He and Madame de La Fayette 
had made a collection of American books, relics and 
keepsakes, and these he now added to upon occasion. 
Washington was dead ; but Jefferson alive, and as much 
interested in affairs as La Fayette. A letter to him 
was sure of a reply. He wrote him, for instance, when 
the South American countries threw off their yokes. 
He rejoiced in the progress of liberty everywhere. 
We admire and talk much of Bartholdi's figure, symbo- 
lizing " Liberty enlightening the world " : it was Bar- 
tholdi's countryman who, in his imagination, placed 
such a statue at Rio and at all other grand sea-gates 
of the world. 

In retirement a man such as La Fayette does not 
410 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

stop his mental machinery, or let it rust. He is apt to 
become more than ever an observer, a reasoner, a 
critic. So it was with him now, during the Napole- 
onic period of glory. The brilliant battles, the equally 
brilliant codifications of the jurisconsults, the public 
improvements on a scale of grandeur hitherto unat- 
tempted, the wholesome encouragement and stimula- 
tion of the arts and sciences — all these Napoleonic 
phenomena were understood and appreciated by La 
Fayette. But — La Fayette could not lose sight of lib- 
erty, or abate one jot of his jealousy in her behalf. 
Apparently neither he nor other great contemporaries 
of Bonaparte realized that the earth-shaker of the hour 
was doing great good in shattering rock-ribbed thrones. 
If a despot were bowled over like a tenpin, the fear 
was that Bonaparte meant to set up another. So close 
was La Fayette to the ever-moving panorama that he 
probably could not see it in all its relevancies, as we see 
it now from the vantage point of the detached student 
looking upon a grand act rounded out at Waterloo. 
The tempests of the times were different from those 
in which he had participated, but they were no less 
violent, no less stirring — " new ideas profoundly mov- 
ing the world; miseries and unparalleled grandeur; a 
nation of soldiers; armies more successful than the 
Roman legions ; war marked by incomparable com- 
binations and results." And from Bonaparte's first 
abdication (April 6, 1814) through the Hundred Days 
of the Bourbons, (March 20-June 22)'^'^ to the second 
abdication (June 22, 1815) La Fayette had many 
sensations both as a patriot on guard and as a philo- 
sophical observer of time's mutations. His purpose 

"France was not now the France of 1789. Peasants had 
risen._ Many owned land. The bourgeois had acquired the 
forfeited estates of the emigres. And now back came the old 
aristocrats by the thousand. Arrogant themselves, they found 
arrogance and enmity in those who had fed fat on their lost 

411 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

in reentering the public service at the Restoration was 
clean-cut. What about the Constitution on which this 
newly-elevated Louis was to stand ? ^^ He protested 
against the Acte Additional of April 22, 181 5. Never- 
theless he was chosen first president of the college 
of electors. In fact, no sooner was Bonaparte back 
from Elba than he sent his brother Joseph to La Fay- 
ette with the request that he should " accept the dignity 
of a peerage." La Fayette answered that " if he again 
appeared on the public scene it must be as a represen- 
tative of the people^ and, having thus escaped being 
a peer, was named in his own department Member of 
the House of Representatives." 

" It is about twelve years since we have met, Gen- 
eral," said Bonaparte, with significant urbanity at the 
opening of the Chamber on June 7, 181 5. La Fayette 
had no ambition to be president jof the House. He 
knew that the candidate for that position least accept- 
able to Bonaparte was the Girondin Lanjuinais,^® so' 

estates. Small wonder that Bonaparte saw his opportunity to 
leave Elba to the gulls and, eagle-like, pounce upon his prey. 
" All complain and none are happy. We have lost our gaiety, 
our buoyancy of spirits, our amiable levity; we have lost our 
manners, our habits, our character ; and what have we gained ? 
An unfeeling egotism; an impenetrable self-conceit; a con- 
tempt for ancient opinions; false ideas of liberty — and gov- 
ernment; half-intelligence on objects foreign to our occupa- 
tions, our affections and our interests; and a profound igno- 
rance of our duty; and, finally, the vanity to know everything 
without study, and to decide on everything without informa- 
tion."—" His. de la Revo., du 20 Mar., 1815," p. 246. 

"The Constitutionalists, who had always advocated the 
cause of a limited monarchy, who had often pleaded the cause 
of the Bourbons, who had been the truest friends of the 
family in the early stages of the Revolution and who had 
never been disgraced by its atrocities, were surprised, of- 
fended and rendered suspicious by the marked slight, bordering 
on insult, with which the virtuous La Fayette, the represent- 
ative of their party, was received on his first appearance at 
Court.—" Second Usurpation of Bonaparte," by Edmund 
Boyce, vol. i, p. 18. 

"Jean Denis Lanjuinais (1753-1827), a distinguished 
statesman, who opposed vigorously the violent measures of 
Marat and Robespierre. He participated in Napoleon's over- 

412 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

threw his strength in that quarter. He voted for sup- 
plies — was not France invaded ? To Paris came news 
of Waterloo — then came its victim himself .^^ He 
had come to Paris thus after Moscow, after Leipsic. 
Lavalette says : *' He came to meet me with a frightful 
epileptic laugh. ' Oh, my God ! ' he said, raising his 
eyes to heaven, and walking hurriedly up and down 
the room. He wanted * two hours to sleep and a warm 
bath ' ; then he would see his ministers." 

Bonaparte got to Paris at 3 o'clock in the morning 
and lost no time in bringing together those whom he 
could best use in putting forth a life-or-death effort. 
Nor did the men who had had enough of him lose time. 

Just as soon as La Fayette caught wind of what 
was going on, he hurried to the House. It was busy 
correcting grammatical errors ^^ in the proces-verbal 
of the preceding day." 

" Leave your errata" said he ; " there is other 
matter of discussion; hasten to open the sitting and 
give me the parole." 

After his forty winks, after his plunge in the tub, 
Bonaparte was less agitated. Paris had awakened, 
and it seemed to be the same Paris. Perhaps it would 
prove his prize once more — just one more time — his 
prize of prizes, his very own. Should he seek to set 
himself up as dictator ? No. He would throw himself 
upon the chambers — the deputies would be loyal, they 

throw, defended with ardor the liberal ideas which he shared 
with La Fayette. 

'* Quitting his shelter at the cottage of a shepherd, Bona- 
parte galloped away from Waterloo pursued by Prussian 
huzzars. He gained his carriage and was driven with the 
utmost fury towards Genappe — there at the bridge he got into 
an immense jam of fugitives. As the Prussians broke one car- 
riage door he leaped out at the other, mounted, and hatless, 
swordless, without mantle, spurred madly off to Charleroi. 
No wonder he laughed like a man beside himself when he 
reached Paris. 

'^ " Events in France," by Helen Maria Williams, 1816. 

413 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

were assembling even now. He had a bulletin sent him 
from the chambers every quarter of an hour. The 
very first that came announced that " La Fayette had 
appeared in the tribune." Bonaparte said, with agita- 
tion : " La Fayette in the tribune ! " He dropped a 
coffee spoon he was using. His look took on increased 
concern — something of dismay. 

*' Gentlemen," said La Fayette, as soon as he had 
ascended the tribune, " for the first time in many years 
you hear a voice which the old friends of liberty may 
yet recognize. The country is in danger and you alone 
can save it. The sinister reports which have been 
circulated during the last two days are unhappily con- 
firmed. This is the moment to rally round the national 
colors — the tri-colored standard of 1789, the standard 
of liberty, equality and public order. It is you alone 
who can secure the independence and honor of France. 
Allow a veteran in the sacred cause of freedom and a 
stranger to the spirit of faction to submit to you some 
resolutions which the danger of the present crisis 
demands." The resolutions, which were adopted, 
declared the sittings of the chamber permanent; com- 
mended the army of the line and National Guards, 
admonished the Parisian Guards to prepare for action 
and summoned the ministers to attend the Assembly in 
order to receive their instructions. 

Thus by resolute, quick action in the Waterloo 
crisis was Bonaparte prevented from dragging France 
into his suicidal chasm. 

Lucien Bonaparte attempted to save his brother. 
His eloquence led him to declare : "It is not Napoleon 
that is attacked, it is the French people. Before the 
tribunal of the world the French nation, if it should 
abandon its Emperor, would be justly convicted of 
levity and inconstancy." 

La Fayette answered Lucien. He di.d not ascend 
414 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

the tribune, but spoke from where he stood. " The 
assertion which has just been uttered," said he, " is a 
calumny. Who shall dare accuse the French nation 
of inconstancy to the Emperor Napoleon ? That nation 
has followed his bloody footsteps through the sands 
of Egypt, and through the wastes of Russia, over fifty 
fields of battle; in disaster as faithfully as in victory; 
and it is for having thus devotedly followed him that we 
now mourn the blood of three millions of Frenchmen." 

Lucien bowed. 

" Go tell your brother," said La Fayette, " that we 
will trust him no longer; we will ourselves undertake 
the salvation of our country." -^ 

Soon Napoleon entered. The Assembly arose. He 
spoke,^^ appealing to French valor. As he sat down, 
the deputies turned toward La Fayette, wdio, in the 
course of a solemn appeal to patriotism, said : ** There 
is but one measure which can save the country, and if 
the ministers of the Emperor will not advise him to 
adopt it, his great soul will reveal it to him." 

All understood. Bonaparte must abdicate. The 
Duke of Bassano (Maret) violently assailed La Fay- 
ette. Maret was hissed. The wind, the tide, the world 
— all these and all things, above or below, were against 
Bonaparte. He abdicated in favor of his son ; he quit 
his Paris as one ostracized ; he left his France forever. 

But though one monarch was out another was in — 
Louis XVIII ; and La Fayette soon saw that a royalist 
reaction would bring trouble. 

La Fayette cannot be said to have escaped criticism 
on his course and conduct with respect to the Bourbons 

^ North American Review, January, 1825. — "Lady Mor- 
gan's France," p. 326. 

^' " You will be satisfied with Napoleon's speech," wrote 
La Fayette to a friend, " but I was not so with his face, which 
seemed to me like that of an old despot irritated by the part 
which his position forces him to do." 

415 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

of the Restoration period. He knew both Louis Stanis- 
las Xavier and Charles Philip about as well as he knew 
any pair of mortals. He had rather scornfully refused 
to join the train of Louis when that altogether unmag- 
netic prince was Comte de Provence ; and he had made 
merry with Charles when, as Comte d'Artois, the 
younger of the brothers led a gay life with Marie 
Antoinette at Versailles. Upon the restoration of 
Louis, who had come out of his English exile, Charles, 
just from Switzerland (where he had been " leading 
a life of religious asceticism"), placed himself at the 
head of the reactionaries. He had been born the same 
year as La Fayette ; he had fled from France three days 
after the fall of the Bastille; he was known to be in 
favor of the reestablishment of aristocratic conditions 
as they existed under the ancien regime. What the 
critics blame La Fayette for, in the first instance, is 
that he did not have the prescience and the hardihood 
to stand out against the discarded Capets. They think 
he should have fought the Bourbons as hard as he 
fought Bonaparte. But, as Tuckerman shrewdly appre- 
hends, La Fayette was so occupied with getting rid of 
one evil that he did not have time to fight oflf the other. 
It is doubtful if he could have made head against 
them. " The well-known opposition of La Fayette to 
the restoration of Louis XVHI made him an object of 
hatred to the royalist party; but as he had been the 
opponent of Bonaparte also, there was no excuse for 
visiting upon him the vengeance which attainted so many 
actors in the Hundred Days." Such, for instance, as 
the heroic Ney, who was tripped by fate and suffered 
death.-* With " a plague on both your houses," La 

** Ney had reached the Chateau of Bessonis, in Cantal, and 
would have escaped but that he left his Turkish sabre, a gift 
from Napoleon, on a table in the salon. He was shot in the 
.gardens of Luxembourg Palace by a platoon of grenadiers. 
TJhirleeu buUfis pierced him. 

416 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

Fayette went back to his retirement at Lagrange, where 
he " remained in entire seclusion for four years." 
Thus this one at Lagrange (and another, at St. Helena) 
kept watch on events — the Terreur Blanche, the 
growing disfavor of the Royalists, and certain sig- 
nificant upcroppings of Liberalism. Louis and his 
minister, Richelieu, were ** openly antagonistic to 
Liberal feeling." " It was around the charter in 
particular that a thirteen years' struggle was waged; 
and it began the moment the Duke of Richelieu assumed 
the reins of power." 

And what was La Fayette doing? Still watching; 
but now again about to take part in affairs. In 1819 he 
entered the New Assembly.^^ He felt called upon to 
protest against any further attempt to restore the old 
prerogatives. There was a body called the " Congre- 
gation," with a membership of some 5000 ultra-Royal- 
ists; opposed to this were certain associations (ventes) 
similar to the Italian Carbonari. La Fayette worked 
with these associations. The Liberal ferment, largely 
under cover, was not confined to France; it extended 
to all countries where the Bourbons had returned to 
power. On the night of February 13th, 1820, Charles 
Ferdinand, Duke of Berry, was assassinated, while 
escorting the Duchess to her carriage after the opera.^^ 
His brother, the Duke of Angouleme, was childless; 
and Louvel, a saddler, thought that by murdering 
Charles he could blot out the Bourbons. But the 
Duchess of Berry gave birth to a posthumous son 

'^'According to the diary of the Duchesse de Broglie, the 
election of La Fayette, in 1819, " upset the whole of France 
and nearly the whole of Europe." 

^^ It was the last Sunday before Lent — " The audience 
was large, the boxes were filled with women covered with 
diamonds." The Rossignol and the Noccs de Gamanche were 
successful. The Duke waved his hand to his wife, saying: 
"Adieu, Caroline ; we shall see each other presently." All of a 

27 417 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

(September, 1820), known as Henry, Duke of Bor- 
deaux, Comte de Chambord — " Henry V." Reaction, 
now, was more pronounced than ever. " Scarcely was 
the session at an end (in 1820)," says Van Laun,-' 
" when the existence of a widespread miHtary conspir- 
acy, having for its object the expelHng of the Bour- 
bons, was made known to the Government on the eve 
of the projected Revolution, and amongst those who 
were involved were La Fayette and other deputies." 
La Fayette was very much involved.-^ He was 
determined to oppose the Crown at the risk of ruin to 
himself — a hard resolve for a man past his prime, who 
had but lately suffered bankruptcy and Olmutz. 
*' Bah ! " he said, ** I have already lived a long time, and 
it seems to me that I would worthily crown my political 
career by dying on the scaffold in the cause of liberty." 
Commenting on the proposed electoral law to limit 
the ballot to a few thousand proprietors, he added: 
" This law is a declaration of war to the death against 

sudden a man threw himself on the Duke, seized his left 
shoulder with one hand and gave him a poignard thrust under 
the right breast with the other. The Duchess leaped from the 
carriage and took her dying husband in her arms. — " The 
Duchess of Berry and the Court of Louis XVIII," by Imbert 
de Saint-Amand. 

^^ " The French Revolutionary Epoch," by Henri van Laun, 
1879, vol. ii. 

^* " In the general debate," says the Due de Broglie, " M. 
de La Fayette went into the tribune three times. He had 
written his principal speech, for fear that it should be found 
too violent. The effect was only the worse for it ; there was 
something noble and imposing in his manners, an accent of 
the ancien regime, which contrasted strangely with the revo- 
lutionary ideas and expressions with which his language was 
stamped. The debates were heroic. One of the ministers, M, 
de Serre, * nearly dying,' sent a thrill through the Chamber on 
one of these occasions by his rebuke : ' When civil war breaks 
out, whatever blood is shed is on the head of those who have 
provoked it. The previous speaker (La Fayette) knows this 
better than anyone else; he has learned more than once, with 
the feeling of despair in his heart and a blush on his brow, 
that he who arouses the fury of the mob is obliged to follow 
that very mob, and almost to lead it.' " 

418 



IN NAPOLEON'S TIME 

the Revolution; the Royalists wish to have done with 
the principle of liberty and equality. We have no 
longer any resource against this party and its attacks 
but that of resistance by gunshots." Through commit- 
tees in other cities, in communication with Paris as a 
centre, a definite plan was perfected. La Fayette was 
at the head of the Paris Committee; Vincennes and 
August 9th were the time and place agreed upon for 
an outbreak. But it was put off. Next year a plan was 
laid for simultaneous risings. La Fayette was again 
the leader. Neuf-Brisach, Befort, Metz, Nancy and 
Strasbourg were involved. 

" The communications between Alsace and Paris 
were to be cut," says Tuckerman, " and a provisional 
government, consisting of La Fayette, d'Argenson, and 
Koechlin was to be established at Strasburg. The 
24th of December was the anniversary of the death 
of Mme. de La Fayette. That day the General always 
consecrated to her memory and passed in her room. In 
order to observe this custom, he left Paris for Lagrange, 
where he awaited the signal for his departure for 
Alsace. The night of the 29th was assigned for the 
rising, but various accidents occurred to delay it till 
the first of January. As soon as word reached 
Lagrange, La Fayette entered his travelling carriage. 
His son George, attached to his father by the closest 
bonds of confidence and affection, accompanied him on 
the journey which might conduct both to the scaffold. 
When the General saw his old servant Bastien enter the 
carriage he felt some compunction. * Bastien,' he said, 
* George and I are about to risk our heads. I ought 
to warn you that in accompanying us you may be risk- 
ing your own.' * I know it, General,' said Bastien. 
' I know what we are about to do ; but don't let that dis- 
turb you. I am going on my own account, moreover ; 
these opinions are also mine.' 

" At Befort ... the troops of the garrison 
were in the plot. On the night of January ist, accord- 
ing to agreement their guns were loaded and their 
knapsacks packed ready for the campaign. The hour 

419 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

was rapidly approaching for them to take possession 
of the citadel and begin the conflict in which the popu- 
lace of Befort and the other cities were prepared to 
join. But, although the soldiers and some of the offi- 
cers were in the secret, the officers of the highest rank 
in the garrison were not so. The adjutant, Tellier, 
one of the conspirators, had called together all the ser- 
geants and given them orders to make ready the troops, 
which had been duly executed. But it happened that 
one of the sergeants had but that moment returned 
from a leave of absence. The fact was not noticed, 
and no information was given him. He placed his own 
company in readiness and then, to testify to the zeal 
for duty with which he had returned to the regiment, 
he sought out his captain and informed him that his 
orders had been executed, that the guns were loaded 
and the knapsacks packed. The captain was playing 
cards with a fellow officer. Neither was in the plot. 
. . . They suspected something wrong . . . the 
gates were closed. . . . Two of the conspirators 
hastened to meet La Fayette, then known to be on the 
road to Befort. They were in time to stop him. He 
ordered the carriage to take another road leading to 
the town of Graz, where he alighted at the home of a 
friend named Martin. Here he passed several days in 
order to make this visit the object of his journey." 

It was a great risk that La Fayette had taken. But 
the evidence against him was circumstantial. The 
Royalists feared to bring him to trial and the matter 
was passed over without action. His enemies contented 
themselves with defeating him for the Assembly at the 
election in 1823. The Bourbons grew bolder. Bona- 
parte was dead (May 5, 1821). Louis XVHI died on 
September 16, 1824, and Charles X became King of 
the French. 

But, meantime, we must follow La Fayette across 
the sea. 




LA FAYETTE 

This portrait was painted for the City of Philadelphia, in 1824, by Thomas 
Sully and is now in the Liberty Bell vestibule in Independence Hall. Sully's 
study for the portrait is owned by Herbert Welsh of Philadelphia. The walking 
stick used by LaFayette when posing for this portrait is the property of the City 
of Philadelphia. It is of blackthorn, with ivory hand-grip mounted by a silver ring. 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

La Fayette's last visit to his much-beloved Land of 
Liberty was one of the happiest events ever set forth 
on the historian's page. It happened during the " Era 
of Good Feeling " in America ; and at that time, as 
James Schouler ^ says, " the memories of '76 were 
peculiarly tender." La Fayette was the only surviving 
general officer who had served under Washington. 
Monroe was " the last of the Revolutionary Presi- 
dents," though we should not forget that Andrew Jack- 
son also burned powder, under his own nose, in that 
war, as well as in its sequel — the War of 181 2. In 
fact, many Revolutionary celebrities, such as Chief Jus- 
tice Marshall, could walk arm-in-arm with the Marquis 
and tell camp-fire tales of '76. But the vast majority 
of the people of the twenty-four States of the Union 
had come into the world since the Revolution. From 
3,000,000 the population had become 12,000,000. John 
Adams lingered, " in the rustic routine of his little farm 
at Braintree, where his playful banter kept all at his 
table in good humor " ; and Jefferson still held open 
hall at Monticello; but, for the most part, those vic- 
torious fathers, whom Americans already idealized 
as heroes and sages, had gone the sorrowful way. 
Since their time " La Fayette's star had risen and sunk 
repeatedly with the vicissitudes of France. ... A 
guest like this no nation was likely to entertain a second 
time. . . . The splendor of his reputation in the 
Old World heightened his earlier renown in the New." 

" To use Clay's felicitous expression," adds 

^"History of the United States Under the Constitution," 
vol. iii (1817-1831), pp. 317-324- 

421 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Schouler, *' it seemed a realization of that vain wish 
that the patriot father might revisit his country after 
death, and contemplate the immediate changes which 
time had wrought." 

Perhaps the effect of Monroe's own tour in reawak- 
ening the patriotic spirit of the people had something 
to do with his invitation to La Fayette to cross the water 
and shake the hands of his friends. Monroe's object 
in making his tour was to inspect the coast fortifications 
planned by General Bernard, who had come to America 
with credentials signed by none other than La Fayette. 
The outcome was infinitely more important than Mon- 
roe had anticipated. He realized it, and, most likely, 
felt that the patriotic fervor would be brought out again 
if La Fayette should come over. It has been assumed 
that La Fayette's own purpose in coming v/as to clear 
up his claims. True enough, no doubt ; but, to a man 
like La Fayette, the object dearest to the heart, under 
such circumstances, must have been less material. He 
loved America — wished to see it; breathe its air; feel 
the close hand-clasp, and feed his soul with those tender 
thoughts that arise when in the embrace of a warm- 
hearted people. 

At the same time, money did, of course, enter into 
the matter. It was necessary to consider it. La Fay- 
ette had to borrow in order to come. As decency dic- 
tated, the claim was to be kept " delicately in the back- 
ground." Jefiferson understood the situation. He 
wrote to Monroe that he hoped Congress would be pre- 
pared " to go through their compliment worthily ; that 
they will not merely dine him, nor send him back empty- 
handed, for this would place us in indelible disgrace 
in Europe." Congress responded. It authorized Mon- 
roe to send a frigate for La Fayette ; and, in his letter 
of February 24, 1824, which ex-Senator James Brown, 
of Louisiana, the new Minister to France, took abroad 

422 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

with him, the President so notified the expected guest. 
It was the ardent desire of the whole nation, wrote 
Monroe, once more to see its benefactor. 

Refusing the frigate, La Fayette sailed by the Cad- 
mus packet. Captain Allyn, from Havre, July 13, 1824, 
and saw America again one bright Sunday a month 
later. With him were George Washington La Fayette 
and M. Auguste Levasseur, who, as secretary, made 
so many notes that, by and by, he wrote a book on the- 
tour.- One servant, the ever-faithful Bastien, accom- 
panied the party. As a vagary, two eccentric English 
women " attached themselves to it." 

When the Cadmus approached New York harbor, 
La Fayette turned to a man near him and asked if he 
thought a hack could be had at the wharf to take him 
to a hotel. So says Senator Thomas H. Benton (in his 
" Thirty Years' View/' vol. i, p. 29), who adds: 

*' He expected kindness, but not enthusiasm. He 
expected to meet with surviving friends ; not to rouse a 
young generation. He was received with unbounded 
honor, affection and gratitude by the American people. 
To the survivors of the Revolution, it was the return 
of a brother; to the new generation, born since that 
time, it was the apparition of an historical character, 
familiar from the cradle, and combining all the titles 
of love, admiration, gratitude." 

No Roman ever had such a triumphal procession. 
Through State after State — week after week, month 
after month — it was the same. He had given his whole 
fortune to their fathers; he had oft'ered his life time 
after time; he had lain with them on bloody fields — 
these things they could not forget. They bore him in 

^ " La Fayette en Amerique en 1824 et 1825, ou Journal 
d'un Voyage aux Etats Unis," par A. Levasseur, Secretaire du 
General La Fayette pendant son voyage. Deux tomes en 800, 
orne de onze gravures et d'une carte. 

Translations, 2 vols, in one, New York, 1829. 

423 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

their arms, they cut the traces of his horses and 
pulled his carriage themselves ; they wept with him 
at pathetic memories and swore at themselves for 
weeping at such a time of joy, of jubilant cannon- 
roar and glorious festivity. 

La Fayette was soon made aware that his welcome 
would be a hundredfold heartier than he had antici- 
pated in his warmest dreams. A deputation met him 
with the request that he should postpone his entry 
into New York until the morrow — Monday. He was 
escorted from the quarantine station to the house of 
Vice-President Tompkins, on Staten Island. While 
on the balcony, receiving the congratulations of a great 
crowd, there appeared " a rainbow, one of whose limbs 
enveloped and tinged Fort La Fayette (just across 
the Narrows) with a thousand colors." So wrote 
M. Levasseur, impressed with the happiness of the 
omen. La Fayette himself was " in excellent health, 
full of conversation, and rejoiced, beyond measure, in 
having his foot on American ground." The welcom- 
ing deputation saw before them " a large, stout man, 
slightly lame, with heavy and strongly marked features, 
surmounted by a thick growth of curly reddish hair." 

Next day, August i6, was as big a gala-day as 
New York had seen up to that time. Prints were made 
of the grand panorama on the bay, at the Battery, and 
in the streets of the city. All the dignitaries went to 
Staten Island to escort the guest to Manhattan — all 
the great men and everybody else who could find room 
on the boats.^ The Chancellor Livingston, with the 
West Point Band playing " Where can one better be 
than in the bosom of his f ami-i-lee," * sped along at 

"*La Fayette's Last Visit to America," by Ella Rodman 
Church, Magazine of American History, vol. vi. pp. 321-339. 

* A French air: " Oil petit on etre mieux qu'au sein de sa 
famillef" 

424' 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

the head of a far-extended " aquatic escort " of flag- 
trimmed craft. The Cadmus seemed " rather to be 
led in triumph than to be towed by the two steam- 
boats that accompanied." Sailors from the Constitu- 
tion manned the steamship Robert Fulton. Six thous- 
and citizens were on other steamers. But the descrip- 
tive details of this and countless other receptions can 
only be hinted at here; they would fill a book, or a 
shelf of books. The landing at the Battery, in the 
midst of cannon-thunder and the acclaim of 30,000 
voices ; the parade, led by the La Fayette Guards, " all 
decorated with a ribbon bearing his portrait and the 
legend ' Welcome La Fayette ' " ; the beautiful arches ; 
the barouche in which the hero sat, behind four white 
horses — these and other incidents and objects of the 
day can only be strung together as faintly indicative 
of the character of a greeting that surprised the recip- 
ient, overwhelmed him, touched him to the heart. And 
La Fayette soon found that this was but the beginning 
of a series of ovations. ** He traveled east, he traveled 
west, he traveled north, he traveled south ; he embraces 
and weeps over old comrades by the score ; is addressed 
and sung to by maidens in white and veterans in blue ; 
is whisked off from one entertainment to another; 
braves Siberian cold, and endures tropical heat; is ship- 
wrecked on the Ohio, and has never a moment that 
he calls his own, yet comes up smiling at the end, with 
the same expression of enjoyment and delight in every- 
thing as at first." ^ 

The New York Evening Post said : 

*' The most interesting sight was the reception of the 
General by his old companions-in-arms — Colonel Mari- 
nus Willett, now in his eighty-fifth year ; General Philip 
Van Cortlandt, General Clarkson, Colonel Varick, 

*"La Fayette's Last Visit to America," Magazine of 
American History, vol. vi. 

425 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Colonel Piatt, Colonel Trumbull, and several members 
of the Cincinnati. He embraced them all affectionately, 
and Colonel Willett again and again. He knew and 
remembered them all. It was a reunion of a long-- 
separated family. After the ceremony of embracing 
and congratulations was over he (La Fayette) sat down 
alongside Colonel Willett, who grew young again and 
fought his battles all o'er. * Do you remember,' said he, 
• at the Battle of Monmouth I was volunteer aid to 
General Scott? I saw you in the heat of battle. You 
were but a boy, but you were a serious, sedate lad. 
Ay, ay, I remember well. And on the Mohawk I sent 
you fifty Indians, and you wrote me that they set up 
such a yell that they frightened the British horse and 
they ran one way and the Indians another ! ' " 

Another veteran (this was at New Haven) said: 
*' General, I saw you descend from your horse, and, 
at the head of your division, ford the Schuylkill, then 
four feet deep, on two cold nights of November in suc- 
cession. * Yes,' he cried, turning to the people, who 
were crowding up, ' he never shunned any fatigue or 
danger, and always led the way ! * " ^ 

This was the sort of incident the crowd liked. Huz- 
zas broke out. The drums rumbled. The fifes struck 
up. In leaving New York there was no farewell at 
that time. It was understood that he would soon be 
back. The fact is he paid four visits to that city. 
When he started on this occasion it was in his private 
carriage, drawn by the four white horses. The drivers 
wore silk ribbons fastened to their buttons. One of 
them was heard to say : *' Behave pretty, now, Charley ! 
you are going to carry the greatest man in the world." 

He was five days on the road between New York 
and Boston, because everybody for miles on eidier side 
of the route wished to shake hands with him, or pelt 

^Niles' Weekly Register, Baltimore, August 21, 28, 1824; 
and many other issues. 

426 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

him with flowers, or open their mouths in lusty 
huzzas and ringing cheers.'^ 

Many of the arches were things of beauty. At Put- 
nam's " Horseneck " Rock ; on the college green in New 
Haven; at Providence there were notable receptions; 
and at Boston the people turned out to greet him just 
as though he were not to come back for the laying of 
the Bunker Hill foundation stone. At this time there 
was a reunion at the same hallowed shrine. Nor did 
La Fayette let many hours pass before he paid his 
respects to John Adams, then 89. 

M. Levasseur says: 

" We regularly traveled till nearly midnight, and 
were again on the road by five in the morning. . . . 
The long line of coaches escorted by horsemen armed 
with flambeaux; the fires kindled at intervals on the 
summits of the hills, and around which families had 
assembled who had been kept awake by their wish to 
see their guest, the somewhat rude sound of the trum- 
pet of our escort, the distant and dying sound of the 
bells which announced our passage, all in one word 
formed around us a delightful and striking picture 
worthy of the pen of Cowper." 

Aaron Ogden Drayton said in an oration at Eliza- 
beth, N. J. : 

*' The sight of their uniform, worn by a company 
in Boston upon his last visit to the United States, filled 
him with the deepest emotion. The tear glistened in his 
eye as he turned again and again to view this affecting 
memento of former days, and he repeatedly exclaimed : 
' My brave Light Infantry ! such was their uniform ! 
What courage ! What resignation ! How much I loved 
them ! ' It was with this corps that he achieved the 
memorable campaign of 1781, upon which his military 

' " The Marquis de La Fayette," by an officer in the late 
army, Hartford, 1849. This account of the tour is detailed, but 
covers New York and New England more fully than other 
sections. 

427 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

fame will rest, and which, doubtless, paved the way 
to his subsequent elevation in his own country to the 
command of the National Guard of Paris, and to his 
selection as the leader of one of the three great 
armies employed against Austria." 

By way of Lynn, Marblehead, Salem, Ipswich and 
Newburyport, La Fayette followed the old Colonial 
road to Portsmouth, N. H., and returned through Lex- 
ington, Concord, the Connecticut River and Long 
Island Sound to New York. At every stopping-place 
there was an outpouring and an ovation. 
; One gains a stronger impression sometimes by 
standing in the shoes of a participant. Let us then 
stand in those of Freeman Foster, who, at i8, played 
in a Dunstable, N. H., band, and who at this time 
marched with the Dunstable (now Nashua) Cadets. 

" We were ordered to escort La Fayette over the 
line from Massachusetts into New Hampshire. . . . 
He was in an open carriage drawn by six dapple-gray 
horses ; his son followed in a carriage, drawn by four 
iron-grays; his portrait was on almost everything at 
that time, on our handkerchiefs as well as in the hats 
we wore, and even if he had not been so prominent a 
figure, we should readily have recognized him. We 
then recrossed the bridge, escorting the procession to 
Concord, into the grounds in front of the State House. 
He entered the building and addressed the people from 
the balcony. The day was warm, and we, tired with 
the march and our heavy uniforms, lay down on the 
grass to rest." 

A quiet little pen picture, this — but it was clean-cut 
in the mind of Freeman Foster at 92, and it is clean- 
cut to us now. It is but one of some hundreds of 
similar scenes between the river Merrimac and the 
distant Mississippi. 

As to the way he was received in more populous 
centres: First, a cloud of dust, out of which would 

428 



til o X 




LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

emerge a horseback party of leading citizens — Mayor, 
Judges, Councilmen, a Governor maybe, a grand old 
soldier, with red face framed in white hair — then salu- 
tations ; and the escort would accompany the guest into 
the main street of the town. On the balconies would 
be the ladies; bells would ring; cannon would jar the 
glasses around the punch-bowl, or on the tavern table ; 
hundreds would crowd up to shake hands ; and, finally, 
off would prance the white horses in another cloud of 
dust. Nor must one forget the speeches. Every 
orator had a La Fayette speech, ready for use. But 
the best speeches were the spontaneous, non-oratorical 
ones. *' General, America loves you ! " '' And I," 
said the General, " most truly love America." Some 
called him " Marquis," but he had disavowed " Mar- 
quis," and people warned each other : *' Don't call him 
' Marquis,' call him General." Nevertheless, some of 
the privileged belles he had danced with clung to 
" Marquis," and spoke it so sweetly and lingeringly 
that he smiled. Thus with every town en fete, and 
the countryside acclaiming him, he passed on from one 
triumph to another. It was the day of fife and drum, 
of smart cavalcades, of tall masts displaying streamers 
of red, white and blue and of all that old Colonial 
picturesqueness long since lost. Men still thundered 
forth their views, still pinched snuff. The old paddle- 
wheel steamboat was puffing up-stream and gliding 
down — as beautiful as any swan ; but " it was six years 
before ground was broken with a silver spade for the 
first railroad in the State of New York." 

Back in New York City in time for a dinner given 
by the Cincinnati on his 67th birthday, September 6, 
he was especially lionized, on the 14th, at an emblematic 
fete in Castle Garden. New York had laughed at an 
ambitious play, " The Siege of Yorktown," but was 
proud enough of the spectacular affair at the Garden. 

429 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

La Fayette left it at two of a glorious moonlit morning 
to ascend the Hudson on the James Kent. West Point, 
Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Albany, Troy,* entertained 
him, and it was the 226. of September before he got 
away from New York for Trenton and Philadelphia. 
Eight days La Fayette spent in Philadelphia,® which, 
famous throughout the nineteenth century for its 
patriotic parades and illuminations, now outdid itself — 
Masonic dinner, civic ball, military fete and a series 
of house-warmings at Independence Hall.^^ One of 
the oddest incidents was that when La Fayette was 
seized in the stalwart embrace of a Quaker in drab 
and broadbrim. He had been a fighting Colonel in the 
Revolution. In the Senate Chamber at Harrisburg, 
La Fayette seated himself in John Hancock's chair, 
exclaiming: "From this chair also he (Hancock) 
signed my early admission as a soldier in the Ameri- 
can army." Having visited Chester and Wilmington,^^ 
La Fayette reached Baltimore near midnight to find the 
whole city illuminated in his honor. The bands in 
Baltimore played " La Fayette's March." Five days 
there were barely enough, but it was the loth of Octo- 

' At Troy La Fayette " was struck with astonishment." 
" What ! " he exclaimed, " has this city risen from earth by 
enchantment?" When he had crossed the Hudson there, in 
1778, he found but three or four cottages, at one of which he 
obtained a cup of milk and a bite of Indian bread. 

" " The public is so excited by the arrival of La Fayette," 
said a Philadelphia newspaper, "that ten thousand persons 
have visited his portrait at the coffee-house." 

"Six thousand militia under Cadwalader escorted La 
Fayette into the city. Only the sick remained indoors. 
" Steps," says Levasseur, " had been raised on each side of the 
streets, high as the roofs, to afford places for the spectators." 
Judge Peters sat in La Fayette's calash. Four tented wagons 
each contained 40 veterans of the Revolution. As they passed 
there was a roar. There were 30 arches. 

" At the Delaware border La Fayette was met by a delega- 
tion headed by Colonel Allen McLane, who had served under 
him at Barren Hill. McLanc, though over 80, presented him- 
self on horseback "wearing on his head a revolutionary cap 
and feather." 

430 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

ber, and his itinerary contemplated a visit to Wash- 
ington and Mount Vernon before proceeding to York- 
town for a celebration on the anniversary of the sur- 
render. So he hurried on to Washington, where he 
was the recipient of the heartiest and most flattering 
attention. President Monroe had hoped to be his per- 
sonal host and have him at the W^hite House; but it 
suited better to continue to regard him as the guest of 
the Nation. Three nephews of Washington received 
him at Mount Vernon. He went down alone into Wash- 
ington's tomb and came out in tears. For a quarter 
of a century his hero had been gone on the long march 
where no drums sound. It brought a thousand memo- 
ries to La Fayette — this quiet autumn hour at Mount 
Vernon with the yellow leaves thick under foot. 

But there at hand was the blue Potomac; and it 
flowed in lovely reaches to the Chesapeake, whither 
he now passed by steamer. By this time steamboats 
were numerous in these waters and all of them seemed 
to bring loads of patriotic passengers on this 44th 
anniversary.^- A thousand things happened, but the 
oddest was the discovery of a stock of Cornwallis' 
candles, which were " arranged in a circle in the centre 
of the camp, where the ladies and soldiers danced dur- 
ing the evening." At Williamsburg, Norfolk, Ports- 
mouth, Richmond, Petersburg, there were La Fay- 
ette celebrations. La Fayette laughed when the people 
at Petersburg thanked him for burning their town 
of " miserable wooden houses " in 1781. Now Peters- 
burg was of brick — a handsome place, indeed. No 
doubt La Fayette would have preferred a longer stay 
in the James River region — scene of his most success- 
ful campaign — but he wanted to see Jefferson and 

^'^ Chief Justice Marshall was present. For La Fayette's 
reception at Yorktown and Richmond see John C. Calhoun's 
memorandum to President Monroe, pp. 225-227, Annual Report 
of the American Historical Association, 1899, vol. ii. 

431 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Jefferson wanted to see him. Soon they embraced. 
A whole week was spent at Monticello.^^ Its master, 
fast aging, welcomed La Fayette to Charlottesville, but 
was unable to attend the dinner given at the University. 
"I joy, my friends, at your joy," he wrote; and his 
tribute was regarded as the most eloquent of the occa- 
sion.^* From Monticello, La Fayette journeyed to 
Montpelier, where he passed some days with ex-Presi- 
dent Madison. He was in Washington on the 23d of 
November, when he dined with President Monroe ; 
and again visited Baltimore. It was all he could do 
to keep his engagements within bounds, so heavy was 
the press of hospitality. 

Then came the great occasion when La Fayette was 
the guest of Congress. ^^ That body voted him $200,000, 
and " one complete and entire township of land." It 
was a red-letter day in Washington when Jefferson, 
Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams met to bid 
him good-bye. 

La Fayette left Washington ^"^ early in March for the 
South and West. On this grand swing around the 
southern circle, he was entertained in the two Caro- 

" At the University of Virginia " a rattlesnake from which 
the fangs had been extracted, was seen disporting itself on the 
floor of a small hall, the interesting reptile being intended as 
a present to George Washington La Fayette, who had expressed 
a desire for one." — Magazine of American History. 

" " The Marquis de La Fayette," by an Officer of the 
Late Army. 

" La Fayette, in his reply to Henry Clay's speech of wel- 
come, said that the United States reflected " on every part of 
the world the light of /a far superior civilization."— Address 
.of John Jay, " The Demand for Education in American His- 
/tory," papers of the American Historical Association, v. , p. 22. \ 
/ ^^ La Fayette wrote to Colonel Trumbull from' Paris, \ 

January 24, 1824 : " It is to me also an inexpressible gratifica- 
tion to think your admirable pencil has fixed me on the grand 
central rotunda of the Capitol of the United States, where I 
like myself seen, viz, : in my American Regimentals, under our 
republican cotitinental colors, at the head of my beloved, gal- 
lant, affectionate light infantry, at the successful close of the 
Virginia campaign." — Niles Register, March 6, 1824. 

432 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

linas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. 
He was interested in his namesake-town of Fayette- 
ville, N. C, of which he had at home an excellent 
drawing made for him in 1814 by M. Horace Say. The 
old battlefields and the old fighters all through the 
Carolinas kept his curiosity on edge. 

At Camden he laid the cornerstone of a monument 
to the Baron de Kalb. '' He could have done more than 
I," said La Fayette, " but Fate took the better man." 
He was escorted along the old Indian trail to Charleston 
by a troop mounted on white horses. With him in his 
carriage were Governor Manning, George Washington 
La Fayette and Colonel Francis Kinloch Huger of 
Olmutz fame. La Fayette pressed Colonel Huger to 
take part of the gift voted by Congress. He said: 
" You shared my prison, now share my wealth ! I 
cannot be rich while you are poor." Colonel Huger 
was touched ; but he would not accept the money. He 
said he had enough for his daughters, and, as for his 
sons, he had taught them to make their own way 
unaided. At Charleston, La Fayette leaped from his 
carriage and ran to that of the patriot Pinckneys — 
General Charles Cotesworth (81) and General Thomas 
(y8) — and kissed them, French-fashion, to the joy of 
a wondering multitude. Here is a description of 
La Fayette as written by H. W. Conner, ^'^ who said of 
him at the Charleston ball given in his honor : 

*' The Marquis is in form tall and stately. . . . 
He is lame in one foot, and a good deal infirm in age, 
though his appearance from the color of his wig and the 
brilliancy of his eye is altogether youthful. His features 
are long and somewhat narrow with a retreating but 
unusually high forehead. His features, take them 
together, are more expressive of goodness than any- 

" Now in the possession of the Conner family and quoted in 
" Charleston, the Place and People," by Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel. 

28 433 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

thing else. His eye is the only remarkably fine feature 
he has. That is a fine large dark eye, exceedingly quick 
in its transition from one object to another. I think 
the man's countenance expresses his character as intelli- 
gently as language itself could make it." 

Spring was now opening. So hospitable were the 
people at Charleston and Savannah, where he laid the 
cornerstone of monuments to Greene and Pulaski, that 
it was difficult for him to continue his tour. But at 
last he was off, and soon among the welcoming Creeks 
and Alabama red men. Not until April did he reach 
New Orleans. On the evening of his arrival there he 
found that he had to decide whether to visit the French 
or English theatre that night. He drew lots, but when 
he went to the English theatre the play could not 
proceed because of the attentions he himself attracted. 
He quit the house, out of politeness, and went to the 
French theatre, where he also unwittingly broke up 
the play. The cry "" Vive La Fayette! " was too much 
for the actors, and the performance was suspended. 
Up the Mississippi on one of the brag boats of the 
planter period, he arrived at Carondelet oh the evening 
of April 28. There the steamer was made gay with 
flags ; and on the 29th bore him to the foot of Market 
Street, where all St. Louis, headed by the Mayor, 
Dr. William Carr Lane, welcomed him. As in Louisi- 
ana, the French element at St. Louis made much of 
the hero whose headquarters, at the house of M. Pierre 
Choteau, were thronged with veterans and the sons of 
veterans. La Fayette recognized in the pioneers and 
plainsmen his old Continental comrades turning into 
a new kind of American, He was rejoiced to see 
that they were lovers of freedom, open-natured and 
full of manliness as their sires had been east of 
the Alleghenies. 

On the night of May 8-9, while on board the steam- 

434 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

boat Mechanic, passing from Nashville, where Jack- 
son ^^ entertained him, to Louisville, an Ohio River 
'* snag enfiladed us (as La Fayette expressed it) and 
v^e sank." George Washington La Fayette heard his 
father lamenting the loss of a keepsake (a snuff-box, 
with Washington's portrait) and ran back in water 
waist-deep to get it; but otherwise the shipwreck 
was not thrilling. The steamboat Paragon, bound 
up-stream, rescued everybody. Captain Hall, of the 
Mechanic, was downcast. " Never will my fellow- 
citizens pardon me," he said, " for the perils to which 
La Fayette was exposed last night." Ascending the 
Ohio to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, La Fayette also 
sailed up Lake Erie, admired Niagara, smoked the 
peace pipe with Indian chiefs, passed through New 
York by way of Buffalo and Rochester and thence con- 
tinued eastward as far as Portland, Me. He " wanted 
to see it all " ; he wanted to enjoy it all ; and did enjoy 
it. No such " conscientious " traveller ever visited 
America. We blush for Mrs. Trollope when we think 
of La Fayette. Returning from Down East by way 
of Burlington, Vt, Lake Champlain and the Hudson, 
La Fayette found himself in Boston on June i6, as the 
guest of the Legislature of Massachusetts. On June ly 
occurred the ceremony of laying the foundation stone 
of Bunker Hill monument. This great event, the semi- 
centenary of the battle, has gone into history. La Fay- 
ette's toast was : " To enfranchised Europe." 

Back in New York for the fourth time, July 4, 1825, 
he said in a speech : " At every step of my visit through 
the twenty-four United States, I have had to admire 
wonders of creation and improvement." 

"Jackson owned and highly prized the pistols La Fayette 
had presented to Washington. He had the greatest admiration 
for La Fayette, " a generous soul fired in the cause of liberty 
. . . which we enjoy." 

435 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

La Fayette's name^^ was bestowed upon niany places 
and things. Fifty-five cities, towns and counties -^ 
now perpetuate it. There is no State named after him, 
but Fayettevilles and La Fayette's nevertheless abound. 
La Fayette, Indiana, is especially notable. La Fayette 
Square, New York, long has been known ; and for that 
matter, La Fayette Square, Washington. But what is 
a square to a mountain? We have Mt. La Fayette in 
New Hampshire ; and what is a mountain to a college ? 
We have La Fayette College in Pennsylvania. La Fay- 
ette hotels are numerous, though not quite so numerous 
as Washington hotels. Identified spots where Washing- 
ton slept are so thick along the Atlantic seaboard as to 
force the inference that he slept all the time except when 
he was picking hickory nuts — his one weakness. 

La Fayette left Washington by the steamboat Mount 
Vernon on the 7th of December. At the mouth of 
the Potomac his party and their belongings were trans- 
ferred to the frigate Brandywine, which sailed for 
France on the following day. She made her start 
*' under full sail, transversing the centre of a brilliant 
rainbow, one of whose limbs appeared to rest on the 
Maryland shore, and the other on that of Virginia." 
As he had come in under a bow of promise, so he had 
gone out. He should have been a happy mortal. He 
saw the battle bluffs of the York River — almost his last 
glimpse of America. This was his good-bye to a 
nation with a grand future. He had helped to make 
that nation what it was and what it would be. 

" Marquis de La Fayette was a favorite name for vessels 
sailing under letters of marque, especially in 1781. A Massa- 
chusetts ship called The, Marqtiiss (10 guns; -crew 20) was 
bonded September 19, 1780; and another Marquis (16 guns; 
crew 80) 1781. But most of the naval namesakes of La Fayette 
bore the name Marquis de La Fayette and were bonded in 
1781. Nine of these' figure in the Naval Records of the Revo- 
lution prepared from the originals in the Library of Congress 
by Charles Henry Lincoln, of the Division of Manuscripts. 

^ Ainsworth R. Spofford, " Report on American Historical 
Nomenclature," American Historical Association Report, 1893. 

436 



XI 

HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

Imbert de Saint-Amand, citing Marshal Mar- 
mont, who was with the courtiers near the death- 
chamber in the Chateau des Tuileries just before day 
on September 2y, 1824, makes a vivid word-sketch 
of the scene. M. de Damas, seeing that Louis had 
ceased to breathe, came out, and said : " Gentlemen, 
the King is dead ! " His pause was but for a moment ; 
then he announced : " The King, gentlemen ! " and 
Charles X strode among them. Saint-Amand, quoting 
Madame de Gontaut, sketches for us another significant 
scene. It was at the Louvre, when the Chambers 
opened. The crowd was prodigious. 

" The platform for the royal family was the one 
prepared for the late King [Louis] ; there had been 
a slight elevation in it that the King [Charles] did not 
see, and he stumbled on it. With the movement, his 
hat, held on his arm, fell ; the Duke of Orleans ^ caught 
it. The Duchess of Orleans said to me : ' The King 
was about to fall ; my husband sustained him.' 

" I answered : ' No, Madame ; Monseigneur has 
caught His Majesty's hat.' 

*' The Dauphiness turned and looked at me. We 
did not speak of it until six months after. Neither 
of us had forgotten it. 

^ Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was born Oct. 6, 1773. 
He married Amelie, Princess of the Two Sicilies. She was a 
niece of Marie Antoinette. Louis XVIII said in 1821 : " Since 
his return, the Duke of Orleans is the chief of a party without 
seeming to be. His name is a threatening flag, his palace a 
rallying-place. He makes no stir, but I can see that he makes 
progress. This activity without movement is disquieting. 
How can you undertake to check the march of a man who 
makes no step? . . . The Duke of Orleans is near enough 
to the throne already. I shall be careful to bring him no 
nearer." — " The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X." 

437 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" A few years more and Charles X was to drop, 
not his hat, but his crown." 

At the time of his accession, Charles was the recip- 
ient of many felicitations. " I believe that they were 
sincere," comments Marmont in his " Memoirs " ; " but 
the love of the people is, of all loves, the most fragile, 
the most apt to evaporate." 

It evaporated in this instance because Charles tried 
to take away the rights of the people. Three days after 
he became King, he abolished the censorship and 
decreed the liberty of the press. An enlightened press 
was developing in France. That was in line with what 
the people wanted evidently, for Charles began to be 
applauded. " No one in 1824 could have predicted 
1830. . . . The early days of the reign of Charles 
X were, so to speak, the honeymoon of the union of 
the King and France." But, after the jubilee of the 
spring of 1826, Charles felicitated himself on having 
" a bad ear " — else he would have heard the cry under 
his palace windows: *' Down with Villele!" M. de 
Villele was his reactionary minister. The National 
Guard was particularly offensive in its dissentient noise. 
So Charles disbanded the National Guard. He exacted 
1,000,000,000 francs for the emigres and other purposes 
looking to the restoration of the ancient aristocracy. 
After the ultra-Royalist Villele came the moderate 
Royalist M. de Martignac. Then Charles fell more 
and more under the influence of the ultra-Royalist 
Congregation and the Camarilla controlled by Jules de 
Polignac, son of Marie Antoinette's favorite Duchess. 
All these counter-revolutionists had as their motto ^ 
the favorite device of Louis XIV, "' Un roi, une loi, une 
foi/' They grew bolder than they had been at any 

''"The French Revolution of 1830," by D. Turnbull, 
London, 1830. 

438 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

time since their return to power. France was ruled 
by a " cabal of absolutism." 

La Fayette kept out of affairs. Nor was he 
molested. Charles even spoke of him patronizingly, 
with seeming solicitude, having heard of his illness : 

"Have you any news of M. de La Fayette?" 
he inquired ; " how is he ? " " Much better, sire." 
" Ah ! I am glad of it — that is a man whom I like 
much, and who has rendered services to our family 
that I do not forget. We have always encountered 
each other, although moving in opposite directions. We 
were bom in the same year; we learned to ride on 
horseback together at Versailles riding-school, and he 
belonged to my bureau in the Assembly of Notables. 
I take a great deal of interest in him." 

Very soon he would speak in a less friendly tone; 
but, for the time being, he was disposed to look upon 
La Fayette as quite worthy of a good word. Perhaps 
he hoped that what he said would reach La Fayette's 
ears. The Chambers had just been summarily dis- 
solved ; and La Fayette was rather particular concern- 
ing arbitrary dissolutions. Polignac was to be minister, 
and La Fayette knew the breed. 

It so happened that La Fayette went down into his 
own and the Polignac country at this time. He visited 
Chavaniac. At Clermont, Issore, Brioude, he was given 
greeting, but when he arrived at Le Puy, with the feudal 
memories of the Polignacs, he was honored with a 
dinner at which Polignac's appointment was the theme. 
The toasts were : "To the Charter" — "To the Chamber 
of Deputies, the hope of France ! " 

At Grenoble, on August i6th, he was given an ova- 
tion and presented with " a crown of oak leaves made 
of silver." Wherever he went there were cries, " Vive 
La Fayette! Vive la charte!" At Vizelle, "he was 
conducted to his grand-daughter's house amidst the 

439 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

salutes of cannon." At Lyons there was an outpouring 
of people. La Fayette, in his speech at the Lyons 
dinner, declared that France would resist all violations 
of the charter. Louis on his death-bed had said to 
Charles : " The Charter is the best inheritance I can 
leave you." And so it was. But the selfishness of 
despotism was unbounded. France must not hesitate. 
Frenchmen knew their rights and would defend them. 

Tuckerman contrasts La Fayette's reception in 
Auvergne and Dauphiny w4th that of the heir to the 
throne who was travelling through Normandy. 
" Everywhere he met with significant silence. This 
hostile attitude of the Crown and nation continued 
through the winter of 1829-30." 

Charles again dissolved the Chambers and ordered 
a new election. When he realized that this was going 
against him, he attempted a coitp d'etat against liberty. 
On July 25th, at a Cabinet Council, he signed a number 
of ordinances, one of which read : " The liberty of the 
periodical press is suspended." Another so modified 
the electoral laws as to put the Chambers practically 
at the mercy of the Crown. In a word he — Charles — 
was Dictator ; in spite of the seas of blood he had seen, 
he was willing to risk the oncoming of another Terror. 
It was said of Bonaparte that he no more minded the 
pouring out of blood than if it had been dirty water. 
Charles, a pious man, was so convinced of the necessity 
of exercising firmness, in contrast with his £lder 
brother's " weakness," that he again brought upon his 
House most ruinous revolution. 

As he held his pen poised, a moment before sign- 
ing the provocative ordinances, he said : " Gentlemen, 
these are grave measures. You can count upon me, 
as I count upon you. Between us this is now a matter 
of life or death." 

This was on a Sunday. On Monday, the Moniteur 
440 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

published the edicts. That morning crowds gathered in 
the streets of Paris, Forty-four journaHsts issued a 
joint protest. Among them was M. Thiers, of The 
National. The newspapers turned their workers out 
of doors, and these formed knots of rebelHous crafts- 
men, who soon enhsted the sympathy of increasing 
crowds. Something electrical began to get into the 
atmosphere of Paris. Many who hitherto had paid 
slight attention to the excessive measures of the Polig- 
nac Ministry now bent their minds to quick considera- 
tion as to the rights or wrongs of the controversy 
between the ultra-Royalists and those in favor of the 
constitutional limitation of the powers of the King. It 
did not take long for the fair-minded masses to see 
and feel that a return to Privilegism would be fatal 
to France. The cries oftenest heard were " Vive la 
liberie! " " Vive la Charte! " '' The Marseillaise " was 
sung. As Monday wore towards evening, the gather- 
ing crowds grev/ menacing. Marshal Marmont warned 
Charles at St. Cloud, but the King had been out with the 
Dauphin on a long hunt, and was too tired to talk 
revolution. " Stocks are down," ventured Marmont. 
" They will go up again," commented the Dauphin, 
airily. 

Tuesday the atmosphere was surcharged. The 
crowds were swelling in size and wrath. Barricades 
were built. That afternoon Marmont appeared from 
St. Cloud with his fighting orders. He had been made 
Commander-in-Chief, and directed to put an end to 
the disturbance. 

He had 12,000 troops — the Royal French and Paris 
Guards, three regiments of the line, a regiment of 
light horse and a train of artillery. His own particular 
column consisted of six thousand troops, with eight 
pieces of artillery. All night long preparations went 
on. Wlien day broke on Wednesday the tricolor topped 

441 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

the Hotel de Ville and Notre Dame. The bourdon of 
the Cathedral rang out. Again the tocsin ! Marmont 
threw three divisions of troops into the city. They 
were attacked: first in the Rue St. Honore near the 
Palais; then fired upon from windows, housetops and 
barricades. Bloody battle filled the streets. Some of 
the insurgents used sticks and stones, but thousands 
were well-armed. The Royal Guards fought with deter- 
mination for a while, so that the dead lay thick; but 
soon the soldiers were forced back. They were no 
match for the swarming multitude — students, artisans 
from the faubourgs, thousands of workmen. ** It is no 
longer a riot," Marmont wrote to the King ; " it is a 
revolution. It is urgent that your Majesty should 
adopt measures of pacification. The honor of the 
Crown may yet be saved; to-morrow perhaps it will 
be too late." 

The infatuated Charles had said of himself and 
La Fayette that they were always encountering each 
other, though always moving in opposite directions. 
And it was so now. Marmont's plea met with no 
response. Charles moved on along the course he was 
going, which, as far as Paris and power were con- 
cerned, was decidedly centrifugal; La Fayette, on the 
contrary, hurried to the centre of revolution as soon as 
news reached Lagrange of the Royal outrage and 
popular opportunity. La Fayette arrived on Tuesday 
night. His Paris was again the Paris of 1789. Of 
the 430 deputies only a few were at the capital. These 
he met at the house of the great banker, M. Jacques 
Laffitte (1767-1844). He encouraged them to stand 
together throughout the crisis. Then he made his way 
from point to point, organizing resistance to the Royal 
troops, which had been withdrawn from all points 

442 




VASE PREvSENTED TO LA FAYETTE BY 
THE NATIONAL GUARDS OF FRANCE 

From a drawing by M. Jules Cloquet, M.D. 

It is of silver gilt on a stand in the form of a votive 
altar. Handles of vine-stalks, supported by lions' 
heads. The four statues represent Liberty, Equality, 
Force, Wisdom. The scenes on the four sides of the 
altar are (i) The Surrender of Cornwallis (2) The 
Federation of 1790 (3) The Duke of Orleans at Hotel 
deVille (4) The Distribution of Standards to the 
National Guards, July 31, 1830. 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

except the Louvre ^ and Tuileries. Here they were 
held in a restricted space in the strip along the Seine, 
all day Thursday, with but one line of retreat. This 
they soon took, after a panic among the Swiss, who 
had been stationed at the Louvre. Many men of the 
line fraternized with the insurgents; a few thousand 
escaped from Paris to St. Cloud, whence Charles now 
dispatched commissioners to seek terms of settlement. 
La Fayette had by this time become recognized as 
the director of affairs. At Laffitte's, upon being 
urged to take command of the National Guard, which, 
disbanded by Charles, was now rapidly reassembling, 
he said: 

" I am invited to undertake the organization of the 
defense. It would be strange and even improper, espe- 
cially for those who have given former pledges of 
devotion to the national cause, to refuse to answer the 
appeals addressed to them. Instructions and orders 
are demanded from me on all sides. My replies are 
awaited. Do you believe that in the presence of the 
dangers which threaten us immobility suits my past 
and present life? No! My conduct at seventy-three 
years of age shall be what it was at thirty-two. Duty 
obliges me, a citizen, to respond to public confidence 
and to devote myself to the common defense." 

On this summer day strange and startling sounds 
came in through the open windows. M. de Vaux arose. 
" In the presence of the agitation which reigns with- 
out," said he, " it is necessary that General La Fayette 
should show himself to the citizens." 

"General La Fayette," announced M. Laffitte, 

'One of the wounded in the fighting at the Louvre was 
M. Levasseur, who, as his friend, secretary and fellow-traveller, 
had written the story of La Fayette's last voyage to America. 
Levasseur, a gallant young man, had been shot in the foot. 
La Fayette found him in a room up under a roof upon which 
a hot sun beat down. He was snatched from death. Later, 
one finds him enjoying life as Consul at Trieste. 

443 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

'' accepts the command of the National Guard offered 
to him by prominent citizens gathered together in the 
interest of the defense of the Capital." 

There was much excitement at this time. Shots 
near at hand caused the cry to be raised that the Swiss 
were attacking. Some of the deputies leaped from 
the windows. La Fayette presently was surrounded by 
an immense throng. A number of the more sanguine 
citizens, guns in hand and decorated with tricolor 
cockades, told him the day was won. ** Not yet ! 
Not yet ! " said he, checking them like a veteran who 
knew all too well the fatal danger of over-confidence 
after a preliminary success. The old soldier was back 
in his veins, and fired his blood. Watch for a feint — 
no foolery. They took him to the Hotel de Ville, 
and painstakingly showed him the way. " Let me 
alone ! let me alone ! " he protested. " I know the Hotel 
de Ville better than you. " He was soon in his assigned 
place and at work, directing an organization for the 
emergency, very much as he had done in the same 
headquarters nearly forty-one years before. Never 
has history repeated itself quite so picturesquely as 
in the La Fayette-Hotel de Ville coincidences — each 
in a crisis involving the life of the nation, each in the 
cause of liberty, each against blundering Bourbons, 
each amid the plaudits of the people of Paris. 

To the first Commissioners from Charles at St 
Cloud, La Fayette only shook his head. He would not 
treat with them. On Friday Charles signed an ordi- 
nance revoking the edicts that had brought on his disas- 
ter. Again his Commissioners called upon La Fayette 
at the Hotel de Ville. " It is too late," said La Fay- 
ette. " We have revoked the ordinances ourselves. 
Charles X has ceased to reign." 

That night Charles journeyed to Trianon; the next 
444 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

night to Rambouillet ; * later he withdrew to Cher- 
bourg. Such was the revolution of " the three glorious 
days of July " — the 27th, 28th and 29th ; but what was 
to follow? A Republic? Many favored the estab- 
lishment of such a Government. La Fayette was more 
than ever inclined toward it. Not that he wanted to 
be President of France. He was urged to take the 
Presidency. But the " Cincinnatus " in him was by 
this time one of his ingrained qualities."^ Added to 
this may have been an habitual feeling that France 
was unready for a Kingless Government. He believed 
with Lamartine that " the organization of democracy 
is the continuous and successive work of a century." 
Rome was not built in a day. Again, he knew his own 
limitations. He w^as old; but not too old to think 
clearly or undervalue a fact of great weight, to wit: 
that multitudes confounded a Republic with legalized 
bloodshed and monstrous disorder. As Baron Glan- 
deves, Governor of the Tuileries, put it, when talking 
with M. Laffitte : " The tricolor ! Why, it is, in their 
eyes the symbol of every crime." M. Glandeves repre- 
sented the body of legitimist opinion, which w^as that 

* According to Duke Ambroise de la Rochefoucauld- 
Doudeauville (in his "Memoirs"), the Prince de Polignac, 
while Ambassador at London, admired the way aristocrats took 
part in a Constitutional Government. He thought the same 
thing could be done in France. 

D. Turnbull, in his " French Revolution of 1830," says that 
Polignac, disguised as a domestic, would have escaped during 
the flight of the Court but for the fact that he spoke more 
haughtily than was necessary to a wagoner, who, being nettled, 
cried : "If this man should be Polignac !" To makel sure, the 
domestic was arrested, and proved to be the Prince. 

® Metternich, at Vienna, said to General Belliard : " There 
are two noble, obstinate men of whom both you and I must 
beware, although they are men of honor, and noble gentle- 
men; those are King Charles X and the Marquis de La 
Fayette. Your days of July have crushed the foolish dic- 
tatorship of the old King, and 3^ou will soon be obliged to 
attack the majesty of M. de La Fayette; for this other days 
will be required and not till then will the Prince Lieutenant- 
General be really King of France." — Due de Broglie. 

445 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Henry, the boy Duke of Bordeaux, should become King 
under the regency of the Duke of Orleans. Henry V 
it was who, at his birth, had been given a few drops of 
the wine of Pau. This was the wine with which 
Jeanne d'Albert's aged father had anointed the lips of 
the new-born Henry IV before permitting him his 
mother's nipples. 

But surmise as to what was in La Fayette's mind 
and speculation as to what might have happened had 
he fought against a longer toleration of monarchical 
inefficiency are alike futile. As Charles at the Louvre 
dropped his hat, so he now dropped his crown into 
his cousin's hands. We have come to the era of Louis 
Philippe, son of that Philippe- figalite, who played the 
conspirator's role in the grand tragedy of the Revolu- 
tion, and who bowed his neck to the dropping blade. 
This political Prince had "played many parts" on life's 
stage. Not his own mother, but the famous Madame 
de Genlis, had brought him up. He witnessed the Fall 
of the Bastille. Of the blood royal, in the younger 
branch, he developed into an active Jacobin. He was 
a Colonel when a lad — a General in his youth. He 
had all the ups and downs — an exile, a wanderer in 
Europe, a teacher and traveller in America. Just now 
he was at pains to keep out of the turmoil, but on the 
Friday night succeeding the Three Days he appeared 
at the Palais Royal. MM. Laffitte, Guizot and Thiers 
were among the deputies who were in favor of offering 
Louis Philippe the crown. Saturday afternoon they 
went to see him ; told him that he had been made Lieu- 
tenant-General of the kingdom, and sounded him upon 
his acceptance under the charter. The deputies were 
going a long way toward committing themselves and the 
nation ; but they felt that the real power was with the 
people and those who, at the Hotel de Ville, represented 
the people. ** Where was the right to act ? " said 

446 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

M. Laffitte. " At the Hotel de Ville." " Where was 
the power? Again, at the Hotel de Ville. The peo- 
ple, La Fayette, the National Guard — all were there." 

Accordingly, deputies and duke in solemn proces- 
sion took to the street and marched to the Hotel 
de Ville. The people made way for them and there 
were continuous cries: ''Vive le Due d'Orlans! 
Vive la liberie! " 

" I could hardly control my fears," testifies a deputy. 
" The crowd was immense and almost universally 
armed. From a window, a door, a group, a shot might 
be fired so easily ! My heart did not cease to beat until 
our entrance into the Hotel de Ville." 

Louis Philippe, pale, trembling, said, as he ascended 
the stairs: " You see a former National Guard of 1789 
who has come to visit his old General." ^ 

La Fayette knew just what was to be done. He 
handed a tri-colored banner to the candidate for the 
kingship and led him to a window overlooking the 
multitude. There he embraced the duke in the sight of 
the people. " Vive la charte! Vive le Due d' Orleans! " 
cried the crowd ; and the preliminaries of the affair were 
over. Louis Philippe would succeed his cousin."^ 

'The Feuillant of '91. preserving a weakness for princes, 
did not believe that the Republic which was effected on this 
side of the ocean could possibly be suitable on that side. France 
ought, according) to his idea, to content herself with popular 
thrones surrounded by popular institutions. 

The sly Duke of Orleans knowing how to flatter the senile 
naivete of La Fayette, presented himself to him with tri- 
colored flag in one hand, as " a former National Guardsman of 
'89, coming to pay a visit to his late General." — " The French 
Assembly of 1848 and American Constitutional Doctrines," by 
Eugene Newton Curtis. 

^ " In delivering his answer, the Prince was affected to 
tears. At its conclusion, he embraced M. Laffitte amidst excla- 
mations of 'Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive la famille 
Royale!' which burst from all present, and were repeated by 
the thousands collected in the courts of the palace. In answer 
to the call of the people, the Prince appeared on the balcony, 
accompanied by General La Fayette. They were both received 

447 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

But the Hotel de Ville determined that the charter 
was to be imposed upon the King of the French, and 
not " granted " as in the case of Louis XVHL There- 
fore a Hst of modifications of the charter was made 
out in dupHcate. One Hst was taken to the deputies 
for their approval, and La Fayette personally took the 
other list to the Palais Royal so that a complete under- 
standing could be had. Louis Philippe was to be pre- 
sented with the '' Programme of the Hotel de Ville." 
This is La Fayette's own account of his conference with 
the newly chosen King : 

" ' You know,' I said to him, ' that I am a republi- 
can, and that I regard the Constitution of the United 
States as the most perfect that has ever existed.' 

" * I think as you do,' answered the Duke of 
Orleans ; * it is impossible to have passed two years 
in America and not to be of that opinion. But do you 
believe that in the present situation of France, and in 
accordance with general opinion, it would be proper 
to adopt it? ' 

" ' No,' I said ; * what the French people want 
to-day is a popular throne surrounded by republi- 
can institutions.' 

*' ' Such is my belief,' answered the Prince." 

On the 2nd of August the fugitive Charles X abdi- 
cated, and proclaimed his grandson " King Henry V." 
On the i6th, Charles boarded the American merchant 
ship Great Britain at Cherbourg and sailed away for 
his place of exile — Lulworth Castle in Dorsetshire, later, 
Holyrood Castle, Edinburgh. Captain d'Urville of the 
Great Britain stood at his side as they left the shores 

with acclamations, which were redoubled when the Duchess of 
Orleans presented her children to the people. Impressed with 
the unanimity of feeling which was thus manifested, 
La Fayette took the hand of the Duke of Orleans and ex- 
claimed -. ' We have performed a good work. Here, gentle- 
men, is the Prince we need, this is the best of Republics.' " — 
" French Revolution in 1830," by D. Turnbull, 1830. 

448 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

of France. The American ship Charles Carroll car- 
ried other members of the royal party. The two had 
a talk : 

" * There is a fine ship,' said Charles, pointing to 
the Carroll, ' have we not some as good ? ' * Sir/ replied 
d'Urville, * I do not believe that we have in our mer- 
chant service a single vessel as well rigged, as ship- 
shape and as well handled.' 

'' ' The Americans are getting on well.' 

*' ' Yes, sire ; sixty or eighty years hence they will 
be able to dispute with England the mastery of the seas. 
It is to us, however, that they owe all that.' 

" ' Yes, sire ; it is to your Majesty's brother, to King 
Louis XVI ; they have not forgotten it.' 

" * It was a mistake, a very great mistake, on the 
part of Louis XVI. But who commits none in the 
course of his life? ' 

" The name of La Fayette was mentioned. 

" ' Ah ! ' said d'Urville ; * he, at least, has never 
changed.' 

"'Yes, he is an old flag; for a long time he 
had wished to be King of the masses, but he will 
never be anything.' 

"* Still, sire, allow me to observe that if M. de 
La Fayette, during the recent events, had desired a 
crown, he had great chances for obtaining it. I myself 
was a witness to the enthusiasm that the sight of him 
inspired am.ong the people, and certainly the Duke of 
Orleans was far from enjoying the same popularity.' 

'* * Bah ! La Fayette is at once ambitious and a fool ; 
they used his name, then they will leave him alone.' 
After a few moments of silence and reflection, he 
added : * Still that would never have been said of him 
in his youth.' 

" ' Your Majesty knew him, then, when very young, 
sire.' * Certainly ; we used to pursue our gymnastic 
exercises together — he was clumsy, awkward, but he 
was gracious, amiable and amused us all. Never would 
we have thought that he would turn out so badly.' " 

Charles X had thought to prevent the meeting of 
the Chambers set for the 3d of August. It was held in 
29 449 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

spite of him, and a new era opened for the people of 
France. On the 9th, the Chambers assembled in the 
Palais Bourbon and gave the crown to Louis Philippe L 

Recognition of La Fayette's prime part in the Revo- 
lution came on the 15th, when he was the guest of 
honor at a dinner given by the city of Paris. Deputies, 
Ministers, Judges, officers of the Department of the 
Seine and the municipality, representatives of various 
notable institutions — in a word, all Paris — met to do 
homage to the great liberator and true friend of France. 

Not long after, La Fayette was the chief figure 
at a review of 60,000 soldiers of the National Guard 
on the Champs de Mars. Following a revolution in 
Belgium, he was offered the crown of that kingdom; 
but lost no time in refusing it, with the remark that it 
" would become him as a ring would become a cat." 
Yet La Fayette had something to do with the insurrec- 
tion in Belgium, as well as with other violent outbreaks 
in European countries. Revolutions are catching. That 
which was provoked by Polignac in 1830 resulted in a 
considerable extension of the liberties of mankind. 
Prince Polignac's trial (with three other ex-ministers) 
gave rise to disorder in Paris, and once more La Fay- 
ette was called upon to quiet the populace. But for this 
duty he would have resumed his life at Lagrange. In 
fact — as foreshadowed by Charles — Louis Philippe and 
his ministers were quite willing to be rid of him. They 
had put him to use in the crisis. Now that they were 
well under way, he could go home, and let them appro- 
priate his popularity to themselves. Parties were 
changing. There were now the Legitimists, the Orlean- 
ists and the Republicans. It was the time of Casimir- 
Perier, Soult, Guizot and Thiers. But we need go no 
further along in the political history of France, since 
La Fayette's great work was as good as ended. Of 
course his influence was by no means ended with his 

450 



HIS LAST REVOLUTION 

exit ; it is felt to-day in France and throughout the 
world. It will continue to be felt. But he was well 
along in his last chapter when the Chambers gave him 
a vote of thanks for his services in preserving order. 

At the time of the Lamarque^ funeral riots, in 1832, 
he was appealed to by the agitators to join and lead 
them. He would have nothing to do with the affair. 
He felt that in the main the French people were the 
masters; and that was what he had always worked 
for and suffered for — the sovereignty of the people. 
The new charter of rights was theirs. France had been 
modernized. Aristocratic governments would no longer 
go unchallenged in any part of the civilized world. 

La Fayette never gave up his seat in the Chamber 
of Deputies or lost interest in great affairs. He sat in 
that body from 1825 till his death as a representative 
from Meaux. His son George was a deputy ; and the 
General was keenly interested in everything connected 
with the younger man's work. La Fayette's last speech 
(in 1834) was in behalf of the Polish refugees. 

** General Maximilien Lamarque (1770-1832). He was a 
son of a deputy of the Constituent Assembly; a noted soldier; 
an exile after the Second Revolution; a popular orator. His 
funeral occasioned the emute of July 5th and 6th. 



XII 

LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

La Fayette spent his winters in Paris ; his summers 
at Lagrange. Let us follow Lady Morgan/ who 
hunted her hero to his lair, and wrote about him in 
such a way as to bring down upon her the very same 
Quarterly " so savage and tarterly " that roused 
Byron's wrath. Not only did the Quarterly " take 
Lady Morgan to task for over-praising him, but got 
even with her by scolding La Fayette " like a very 
drab " ; or rather like Dr. Sam Johnson, or any cro- 
chetty Tory of his type, might have done. The Chateau 
of Lagrange, she tells us, is so remote from any high- 
road so wood-embosomed, that her coachman and ser- 
vant had trouble in finding it. They passed from one 
" deep-entangled glen " to another, forded stony 
brooks, floundered through mill-streams, frightened 
flocks of poultry, crossed the remains of a Roman road, 
traversed one of Bonaparte's battlefields; and, finally, 
saw the " five towers of Lagrange-Blenau," with the 
sunset gilding them, as well as beautifying the village 
of Aubepierre and the more distant village of 
D'Hieres, seen through the branches of fine old trees. 
Then, right before her, were the arched portals, the 
ivied towers, the deep moat and the velvet lawn of the 
castle. She continues : 

^ In her two-volume " France," 1817, vol. ii, pp. 302-315. 

^ In its attack upon Lady Morgan's " France," the Quar- 
terly RevieW) April, 1827, with Tory venom, said : " But the 
chief gods of her idolatry are the vain, feeble, doating coxcomb 
La Fayette, who after indulging his vanity, by insulting the 
King and overturning the throne, fled basely from the storm 
which he had raised ; and only returned to public life to take 
a seat in Bonaparte's Champ de Mai." 

452 




LA FAYETTE 

From a painting by S. F. B. Morse, fecit 1825; now in the New York 

Public Library 

By Courtesy of the Art Commission of New York City 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST VISIT 

" We found General La Fayette surrounded by his 
patriarchal family ^ : his excellent son and daughter- 
in-law, his two daughters (the sharers of his dungeon 
in Olmutz) and their husbands; eleven grand-children, 
and a venerable grand-uncle, the ex-grand prior of 
Malta, with hair as white as snow, and his cross and 
order. . . . Such was the group that received us in 
the salon of Lagrange. Such was the close-knit circle 
that made our breakfast and our dinner-party ; accom- 
panied us in our rambles through the grounds and 
woods of Lagrange and constantly presented the most 
perfect unity of family interests, habits, taste and 
affection. La Fayette's figure is still as upright, bold 
and vigorous as the mind that informs it. . . . 
Bustling and active on his farm, graceful and elegant in 
his salon, it is difficult to trace, in one of the most 
successful agriculturists, and one of the most perfect 
gentlemen that France has produced, a warrior and 
legislator. The patriot, however, is always discernible." 

His memory, she adds, is tenacious. He "talks 
with delight of his short visit to England (forty years 
before) and dwells with boyish enthusiasm upon the 
witchery of the late Duchess of Devonshire. He 
speaks and writes English with the same elegance he 
does his native tongue." 

His library is in one of the towers ; and his study, 
like Montaigne's, overhangs the farm3^ard. " It fre- 
quently happens," said he, " that my merinos and my 
haycarts dispute my attention with your Hume and our 

^Georges Washington Motier de La Fayette (1779-1849) 
served with Grouchy as aide-de-camp. He went through the 
Austrian, Prussian and Polish campaigns. Bonaparte's enmity 
caused his retirement in 1807. He was a Liberal Deputy in the 
Chamber for many years. He was away during the Revolution 
in 1830, but took part in that of 1848. 

Oscar Thomas Gilbert Motier de La Fayette (1815-1801) 
was a son of Georges. He served in Algeria. Entered the 
Chamber of Deputies in 1846 " and voted, like his father, with 
the extreme left." He retired in 1851, returning to public life 
in 1875. 

Edmond Motier de La Fayette was the second son of 
Georges — born in 1818, died in 1890. He was a Liberal — a 
member of the Senate from 1876 to 1888. 

453 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Voltaire." In a spacious salon-a-manger, the neigh- 
boring country people and the domestics of the chateau 
meet on a Sunday evening " to dance to the violin of 
the concierge," and are regaled with cakes and eau 
sucree. The General is usually, and his family are 
always, present at these rustic balls. ... In sum- 
mer the affair takes place in the park, where a space 
is cleared for the purpose, shaded by the lofty trees 
which encircle it. Lady Morgan is struck with his 
gracious manner in talking with his work-people about 
the farm. It is "" mon ami " — '^ mon bon ami " — " ma 
bonne mere." To walk in the noble park by moon- 
light with La Fayette and the Grand Prior of the snowy 
hair is a treat, indeed. The talk falls upon Bonaparte. 
" There have been splendid traits in the life of this man 
not to be reconciled to his other modes of conduct." 
So says La Fayette, with some solemnity, musing. 

Such in substance is Lady Morgan's account of her 
pilgrimage; and, though her language be somewhat 
flowery, somewhat flattering, she has preserved for us 
a pleasing and useful picture. 

While Charles James Fox * was at the Archives 
in Paris, transcribing material for his history, he had 
an agreeable surprise. Trotter describes it. 

** A stranger of an interesting and graceful figure 
came gently in, advanced rapidly, and, in embracing 
Mr. Fox shewed a countenance full of joy, while tears 
rolled down his cheeks. It was M. de La Fayette, the 
virtuous and unshaken friend of liberty! ... La 
Fayette at a very early age had visited London ; he had 
there become acquainted with Mr. Fox, and they had 
not met again till now. Therewas too much congeniality 
in their souls not to produce an early and strong senti- 
ment of friendship. Destined from their youth to be, 
in their respective countries, the protectors of the sacred 

■* " Memoirs of the Latter Years of the Rig'ht HonoraMe 
Charles James Fox." by John Bernard Trotter, Esq. (his 
private secretary), 1812. 

454 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

cause of liberty, they had followed different paths, but 
each led to the same temple — that of glory founded on 
the people's happiness." 

These excellent friends — Fox and La Fayette — 
soon journeyed together down to Lagrange, where they 
hobnobbed to their hearts' content. It was glorious 
September weather. Lally Tollendal was there; and 
soon came General Fitzpatrick, " who had known M. de 
La Fayette in America, and had vainly attempted in the 
English House of Commons to rouse the Pitt ministry 
to a sense of humanity and commiseration " when La 
Fayette was at Olmutz. " I have often contemplated 
with pleasure," writes Trotter, " General Fitzpatrick 
and M. de La Fayette walking in a long shady grove, 
near the chateau, speaking of past times, the war in 
America and the Revolution in France." Fox, Fayette, 
and Fitzpatrick! he mused, as he looked up from his 
copy of Rousseau; for, thought he, shady Lagrange, 
lovely Lagrange, where the birds keep up a sweet 
chorus, is just the place to read Rousseau. All around 
are the corn lands of the Isle of France. The grapes 
ripen. The soft winds blow. In one of the towers of 
the castle is a mark made by a cannon-shot fired by 
Turenne's artillery. Fox and Fitzpatrick spent a full 
week at Lagrange ; and never a happier one. 

The Due de Broglie was another visitor at Lagrange. 
His reminiscences contain a score or more of refer- 
ences to La Fayette ; notably an estimate of his charac- 
ter — a character portrait, indeed — which, for truth's 
sake, must be reproduced here. He met at Lagrange 
** young Ary Scheffer," who painted the best portrait 
in oil of La Fayette.^ Perhaps some will regard the 

"As a rule, La Fayette portraits resemble each other, 
which is not the case with Washington portraits. The Carson 
and Mitchell catalogues contain numerous La Fayette refer- 
ences. ^ Here is a compilation kindly made for this work by 
Dr. William J. Campbell, of Philadelphia: 

455 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Duke's word-portrait as similarly true. With Broglie 
on this visit was George Ticknor (introduced by Jef- 
ferson to Madame de Stael) " now the pride and 
ornament of the town of Boston, itself still the pride 
and ornament of North America." Let us reprint a 
few passages from the Duke de Broglie's- memoirs : 

" I did not often see M. de La Fayette at Mme. de 
Stael's. He used to live on his estate at Lagrange, and 
it was only at intervals that he came to Paris. There 
I used to visit him at his house. I also used to meet him 
at M. de Tracy's and at the houses of various friends 
of his. M. d'Argenson had also renewed with him an 
intimacy which had been long interrupted. I loved and 
admired M. de La Fayette very much. I heartily 
shared his sentiments, and that made me rather more 
liberal than Madame de Stael w^ould have wished 
me to be, and gave me in society the reputation of 
being an enemy of the House of Bourbon. It was 
not so, for my part; as for La Fayette, he had not 
yet changed his allegiance. 

Engravings of Lafayette after L. Barre: See Mitchell, Part III, ncs. 
967-971; see Carson, Part II, nos. 1923-1929. After Bournieu: See Mitchell, 
Part III, nos. 972-978; see Carson, Part II, nos. 1930-1935. After P. L. 
Debucourt: See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 947-966; see Carson, Part II, nos. 
1902-1922. After Geille, head after Scheffer: See Carson, Part II, nos. 
2084-2088. Aiter Gerard: See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 987-998; see Carson, 
Part II, nos. 1952-1974. After C. Ingham: i. Half length, seated to left. 
Citizen's dress. Engraved by M. I. Danforth, from the original painting made 
in N. Y. in 1824. Pubhshed N. Y., 1825. After Imbert: i. Landing of 
Lafayette, N. Y., August, 1824, Imbert, del. Engraved by Samuel Maverick. 
Portraits of Lafayette after C. A. Jacobi: i. Lafayette Mar6chal der 
Franzosischen Nat. Arm6e, 1792. Full bust, uniform (Foreign). See 
Mitchell, Part III, no. 899; see Carson, Part II, no. 1822. 2. Full bust, 
uniform, cocked hat (Foreign). Engraved by F. Bolt. See Mitchell, Part III, 
no. 90o;_see Carson, Part II, no. 1821. 3. Franzosischer Feldherr, 1792. Pull 
bust, uniform, chapeau (Foreign). Engraved by F. Bolt, Berlin. See Mitchell, 
Part III, no. 901; see Carson II, Part II, no. 1820. 4. Full bust, uniform, 
chapeau (Foreign). Engraved by Bollinger. See Mitchell, Part III, no. 902; see 
Carson, Part II, no. 1819, see Carson, Part II, nos. 1819-1829. Engravings of 
Lafayette after Jw/iew, head after Scheffer: See Carson, Part II, nos. 2070- 
2083. Aiter LeVachez: i. Maj. Gen. The Marquis de Lafayette. Fullbust, 
uniform, profile. Etched by H. B. Hall, N. Y., 187 1. 2. II Marchese della 
Favette. Full length, uniform. Bosio, Dis. Sasso. Inc. 3- Full bust, uniform, 
profile, A. P. D. A. See Carson, Part II, nos. 1868-1873- After Mme. 
Marchand, aiter the Scheffer head: See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 1067-1080; 
see Carson, Part II, nos. 2026-2069. Aiter Martinet: i. Aquatint (Foreign), 
full length, military cloak. Engraved by Charon. After Al. Mas sard, 
Scheffer head: See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 1081, et seq; see Carson, Part II, 
nos. 2089-2099. After Maurin: See Carson, Part II, nos. 1975-1982. After 
L.lePayon: i. Full length in uniform, standing " Lafayette in 1781" En- 
graved by F. Kearny, Philadelphia 1824. See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 979- 
985; see Carson, Part II, nos. 1936-1949. After C. W. Peale: i. Oval 
frame. Bust in uniform. Painted and engraved by Charles Willson Peale. 
2. Grav6 par Jean Young, London, 1789, (Foreign). See Mitchell, Part III, 
no. 894; see Carson Part II, no. 1808. '3. Etching by Albert Rosenthal, 

456 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

" Seeing that I do not write history, I do not draw 
portraits. That of M. de La Fayette has indeed been 
drawn with a masterly hand by M. Guizot. In my 
opinion it is faultless, except that the odd m.ixture of 
the aristocrat and of the demagogue, so striking in La 
Fayette, does not perhaps come out in sufficiently strong 
relief. M. de La Fayette had to be loved for his own 
sake, which, indeed, required no effort, for one derived 
no satisfaction from being a true friend to him — he 
scarcely made any distinction between a respectable 
man and a rogue, or between a man of sense and a fool ; 
the only distinction he used to make was between those 
who said and those who did not say what he himself 
used to say. He was a regular prince, surrounded with 
people who flattered and plundered him. All his fine 
fortune so nobly offered and received, was squandered 
by the hands of spies and adventurers. Neither was 
there any inducement to follow him as a leader; he was 
ever ready to mix himself in any undertaking at the 
bidding of anybody, exactly like the noblemen of the 
good old time, who used to fight for the sake of fight- 
ing, for the pleasure afforded them by the danger, and 
to gratify their wish to oblige a friend. What I say 

Philadelphia. See Mitchell, Part III, no. 896: see Carson. See Carson 
Partll.nos. 1807-1818. Aitev Quenedey and Cretien. Circular, profile en- 
gravings, very pretty. See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 903-929, see Carson 
Part II, nos. 1830-1867.. After A. Scheffer. i. Full length, standing. En- 
graved by Annin & Smith after Leroux's print. 2. Full length, standing. 
Engraved by M. I. Danforth. N. Y. 1825. 3- Full bust. Painted by 
A. ScheflEer, Engraved & Published by G. Fairman & C. G. Childs, Philadel- 
phia. (Sometimes with Childs' alone & sometimes published by Atkinson for 
the Casket.) 4. Oval, small. Engraved by R. Campbell. 5. Full length, 
small. Engraved by Tiller. 6. Bust. Engraved by J. V. N. Throop. See 
Mitchell, Part III, nos. 999-1066; see Carson, Part II, nos. 1983-2025. 
After Jean Weyler: See Mitchell, Part III, nos. 930-944; see Carson, Part II, 
nos. 1874-1901. Artist not mentioned: i. Oval, full bust, in uniform, profile 
to right. Engraved by T. Clarke, Philadelphia. 2. Oval in rectangle, July 
1830. Engraved by A. B. Durand. 3. Full length standing (probably after 
SchefEer). Bank note vignette, Engraved by A. B. Durand. 4. Full bust in 
uniform. Engraved by S. Hill, & published in the Mass. Mag. Vol. 2. 
5. Nearly 14 length, civilian. Engraved by Wm. Hoogland, published Boston 

1824. 6. M length, standing, civilian. Engraved by J. B. Longacre from the 
portrait owned by Mrs. Bloomfield. 7- Full bust, civilian. Engraved by 
Saml. Maverick. 8. Circular, full bust, civilian. Engraved by P. Maverick, 
N. Y. " La Fayette the Nation's Guest " etc. 9. Oval, full bust in uniform. 
Engraved by John Norman. 10. Small oval surrounded by ornamental 
script. Engraved, "written and pubUshed " by Joseph Perkins March 28, 

1825. II. Full bust, civilian. Engraved by B. Tanner from a lithograph 
published in Paris in 1818, Philadelphia, 1824. 12. ^4 length standing. 
Engraved by A. Willard. 13. Sheet music published by G. E. BipJce, Phila- 
delphia, 1824. Engraved by W. Woodruff. * 14. Nearly ^ length, civilian. 
Engraved by A. Bowen and W, Hoogland. Miscellaneous: See Carson, 
Part II, nos. 2100-2159. Caricatures of La Fayette and scenes in his life: 
See Mitchell Part III, nos. 1117-1182; see Carson Part II, nos. 2160-2226. 

457 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

here I told him a hundred times during the course of 
an intimacy which only closed with his life, and the 
recollection of which will end only when I die." ^ 

This is unflattering yet welcome, since it gives us 
the seamy side of a man upon whom one is prone to 
look as a worshipful hero. At least that is our Ameri- 
can bias. Even in the old days, it was so. La Fayette 
was " the Marquis " to our forefathers, who rolled the 
word under their patriotic tongues. The French, on 
the contrary, used " Marquis " in mockery. Ingersoll 
declared that the eulogists of Abraham Lincoln were 
overdoing their praise of the emancipator, and that 
they were making a steel engraving out of a rough and 
ready mortal — a real man. So we may not be far out 
of the way in looking at all such limnings as the one 
sketched by the Due de Broglie. They will serve as a 
corrective in our proneness to hero-worship. 

M. Jules Cloquet is neither flowery nor flattering 
like Lady Morgan, nor blunt like the Duke de Broglie ; 
but quite matter-of-fact — minutely so. He tells us 
much. He wrote his book ^ at the suggestion of an 
American — Isaiah Townsend. 

Lagrange, Cloquet says, was also spoken of as 
" Lagrange La Fayette." Chateau and farm made an 
almost perfect circle. Apple trees bordered the avenue 
that cut through the park, elbowed past fields, past a 
chapel, past a plantation of chestnuts and thus brought 
one among the evergreens by the bridge which spanned 
the moat. In M. Cloquet's own words : 

" The chateau has two stories besides the ground- 
floor. The servants' bedrooms are immediately under 
the roof. The walls are ornamented and covered on 

" " Personal Recollections of the Late Due de Broglie 
(1785-1820), 2 vols. vol. i,. pp. 269-270. 

^"Recollections of the Private Life of La Fayette," by 
M. Jules Cloquet, M.D., 2 vols, 1836. 

458 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

the outside with creeping plants, such as ivy and Vir- 
ginia jessamine. They are surrounded with thick 
bushes and fine trees, and enormous weeping-willows, 
which rise to the roof, or tranquilly incline their 
branches towards the waters of the moat, which is about 
thirty or forty feet in breadth, and seven or eight in 
depth. It no longer completely surrounds the chateau. 
La Fayette having filled it on the side of the court, from 
which there is now a level passage to the lawn. The 
waters of the moat, which are limpid, and contain fine 
fish, are fed by a stream that runs from one of the 
ponds of the farm. On the outside, the moat is reached 
by a gentle slope, covered with a greensward, enamelled 
with flowers. On the ground-floor of the chateau, 
and communicating with the vestibule, is a small chapel, 
a large dining-room, capable of containing forty or 
fifty persons, and, farther on, the kitchens. A wide 
and handsome stone staircase, perfectly well lighted, 
leads to the two receiving- rooms, to La Fayette's 
museum, and to the corridors, which conduct to the 
other apartments of the family, and to those reserved 
for friends. 

La Fayette's apartments, on the second floor, are 
composed of an antechamber, a bedroom, and a library, 
the windows of which look upon the park, and com- 
mand the buildings of the farm.'* 

There were two groups of these buildings — one 
court with the stables, cattle-barns and sheepf olds, with 
upward of a thousand sheep ; another court with gran- 
aries, stores and other outhouses. 

Of the 800 acres, 500 were arable. These were 
divided into 20-acre fields, each bordered with apple 
and pear trees. The woodland contained much oak 
and beech. There were two considerable ponds — one, 
La Garenne, used as a pleasure place for rowing or 
sailing. Water for the whole farm came from springs. 
The tenant houses were well placed and well built, 
indeed. La Fayette had the advice of M. Robert, the 
landscape painter, in modernizing his " moated grange." 

459 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

" The aspect of the place is delightful," adds M. 
Cloquet, ** especially on walking at some distance from 
the chateau at sunrise. In the distance the building, 
enveloped in mist, seems at first confounded with the 
dark masses of the surrounding trees ; but as daylight 
appears, the immense carpet of verdure which separates 
the spectator from the chateau becomes colored and 
enamelled with flowers ; the towers begin to stand out, 
and the foliage, soon after lighted by the sun's first 
rays, forms an agreeable contrast with the grayish tint 
of the old walls." To condense M. Cloquet: The ear 
catches sounds of human labor — one hears the work- 
men's songs, bird warblings, the lowing of kine, the 
bleating of sheep ; in a word, all is happiness. And now 
La Fayette as a farmer : He slept seven hours ; awoke 
at five o'clock; read, or wrote, for an hour or two in 
bed ; dressed, paid homage to his wife ; worked in 
his cabinet until ten, when he breakfasted; and, then, 
until noon occupied himself with French or foreign 
journals. At noon he left the chateau on his rounds 
of the farm. He returned at three ; worked until six ; 
and then, at sound of the big bell calling home guests 
and work-people, prepared for dinner. In the evening 
he was with his family and friends, often withdrawing 
in order that he might finish some piece of work in 
hand. It was his custom to reappear to say " good- 
night " to all. 

He was a keen student of agriculture; liked to plan, 
liked to experiment and liked to know the best way to 
do a given thing. He was proud of his stock ^ and let 

*His merinos were the best in France. His dairy stock 
was frorn Switzerland and England. Noted agriculturists sent 
him pedigreed animals. The most memorable battle at La- 
grange since Marshal Turenne's day was between a Baltimore 
boar and a boar of Anglo-Chinese breed. It was to the death. 
La Fayette regretted the loss, but sided with the American. 

460 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

the cattle graze even in his groves and perilously near 
lawns and gardens. He never mowed his meadows, 
but let his live-stock do that work for him. 

He used a speaking-trumpet at his library window 
in giving his farm orders, and at times one might have 
thought the Battle of Brandy wine in progress right 
then and there. He walked, or rode his saddle-horse, 
as suited him. Among his horses were old favorites, 
old friends — such as the white charger used by him in 
Paris in 1830. White chargers and revolutions went 
together vvdth him. But at times, especially in his later 
years, at Lagrange, he went the roimds of his farm 
in " a small and very light Russian caleche, which ran 
with ease across the fields." His farmer was the excel- 
lent M. Lescuyer, who kept the farm books, accounting 
for everything. La Fayette was proud of his system, 
and took the set of books with him on his American 
tour. He grieved when he lost them at the sinking of 
the steamboat Mechanic. He said that a farm was a 
factory. Business rules should be adopted ; every crop 
should be made profitable; every fruit tree, every ani- 
mal, every egg, should have its record, however minute. 
Apparently ornamental were certain large alleys of 
green turf extending about the widespread acres of 
Lagrange; not so at all; they enabled the cattle to 
exercise as they grazed. One day as La Fayette was 
about to take carriage for Paris, Lescuyer said that he 
mxcant to have some swine free from mange by the time 
the General should return. He w^ould wash and rub 
them. " Rub them well inside ! " cried La Fayette. 
He believed in wholesome feeding, and wholesomeness 
of all kinds in all the affairs of life. To this end he 
experimented at Lagrange with artificial meadows, 
fertilizers, clover, lucern and what not. He wished 
to raise the standard in his own neighborhood, and 
everywhere else in France. Of course he knew his 

461 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

own limitations of knowledge and capital and that he 
must keep within bounds. He had but sixteen farm 
assistants and thirty or forty hands. Like Jefferson 
at Monticello, La Fayette at Lagrange entertained in 
baronial style. Five-and-twenty guests, often more, 
sat at his board almost every day. La Fayette's seat was 
midway. Children, grandchildren and great-grand- 
children were around him.^ Silver covers were ban- 
ished; wines likewise. In fine weather, if outdoors 
wooed, away went everyone after dinner to lawn, 
garden, grove to catch the breeze, play games or 
stroll sunsetward where the glory was and the birds 
sang sweetest. 

" The families allied to that of La Fayette," says 
M. Cloquet — " the Tracys, Lasteyries, Maubourgs, 
Segurs, and Perriers — frequently visited and passed 
some days at Lagrange." One of the prized guests 
was General Carbonel, who had been on Grouchy's 
staff with George La Fayette. M. Carbonel was 
devoted to his host. Another guest was M. Leon Fres- 
tel, son of the old preceptor. M. Cloquet himself was a 
favorite. Dr. Guersent was La Fayette's Paris phy- 
sician, and M. Cloquet his surgeon. M. Sautereau was 
the doctor at Lagrange. Let no one fancy, of course, 
despite friends and fetes and fine times generally, that 
everything at and around Lagrange was idyllic. That 

'At his death, says M. Cloquet, La Fayette had three 
children, eleven grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren, 
as follows : 

1st, Mile. Anastasie La Fayette, m. to M. Charles de Mau- 
bourg; two children, ist. Mile. Celestine (Mme. de Brigode), 
four children. 2d, Mile. Jenny (Mme. Duperon), one child. 
2d, M. Georges Washington La Fayette, m. to Mile. Emelie de 
Tracy; five children, ist. Mile. Natalie (Mme. Adolphe Per- 
rier), three children. 2d, Mile. Matilde (Mme, Bureaux de 
Pusy), one son. 3d, Mile. Clementine. 4th, M. Oscar. 5th, M. 
Edmond. 3d, Mile. Virginie La Fayette, widow of Col. de 
Lasteyrie; four children, ist, Mile. Pauline (Alme. de Re- 
musat), two children. 2d, Mile. Melanie (Mme. Corcelle), 
one child. 3rd, M. Jules de Lasteyrie. 4th, Mile. Octavie. 

462 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

same Leon Frestel lost a hand in a shooting accident, 
and soon died ; there were many poor people in the can- 
ton ; there were bad crops ; there was much sickness, 
and M. Sautereau and the La Fayettes were at times 
enabled to relieve considerable distress. Especially 
was this so in 1817, when there was a threat of famine. 
M. Cloquet says: 

" To the indigent inhabitants of his canton, La Fay- 
ette's beneficence was unbounded. Two hundred 
pounds of bread, baked expressly at the farm for the 
support of the poor, were distributed to them every 
Monday at the chateau, and in times of scarcity the 
weekly distribution was increased to six hundred 
pounds. The bread given was of the same quality as 
that eaten at La Fayette's table. . . At times each 
individual received a mess of soup and a sol in addi- 
tion to his portion. If the poor were afflicted with 
some grievous malady, La Fayette visited them, and had 
them attended to at his own expense by Dr. Sautereau." 

Said Dr. Sautereau : "All La Fayette's moments at 
Lagrange resemble each other, for they are all marked 
by good feelings or kind actions." La Fayette helped 
to sustain the Noailles charity at Court-Palais; and, 
at times, he sent patients to the hospitals at Rosay, 
where they were attended to at his expense. He opened 
his park to his neighbors. Some of the fetes were 
notable affairs; but the greatest of all was the one 
given by the people of the canton to La Fayette upon 
his return from America. Four thousand people 
feasted. Six thousand saw the fireworks in La Fay- 
ette's honor. The dancing lasted till dawn. But what 
of La Fayette's looks at that time — the period of, his 
declining years ? Dr. Cloquet answers the question : 

" La Fayette was tall and well-proportioned. He 
was decidedly inclined to embonpoint!, though not to 
obesity. His head was large, his face oval and regu- 
lar ; his forehead lofty and open ; his eyes, which were 
full of goodness and meaning, were large and promi- 

463 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

nent, of a grayish blue and surmounted with light and 
well-arched but not bushy eyebrows; his nose was 
aquiline ; his mouth, which was habitually embellished 
(sic) with a natural smile, was seldom open except to 
utter kind and gracious expressions; his complexion 
was clear ; his cheeks were slightly colored ; and at the 
age of seventy-seven not a single wrinkle furrowed 
his countenance, the ordinary expression of which was 
that of candor and frankness. ... La Fayette's 
sight was excellent; but of late his hearing had lost 
something of its delicacy. His perceptions were keen. 
. . . His deportment was noble and dignified, but his 
gait since 1803 was rather constrained, in consequence 
of the accident of a broken thigh, which compelled him 
to lean on his cane when walking, and prevented him 
from sitting dovv^n with ease and quickness, on account 
of a stiffness in the hip-joint. His other movements 
were easy and natural, and, though he had but little 
suppleness in his fingers, his gestures were graceful, 
and rarely abrupt, even in the moments when his con- 
versation w^as most animated. The tone of his voice, 
which was naturally serious, was soft and agreeable, 
or strong and sonorous, according to the circumstances 
under which he spoke. . . . His frugal meal 
invariably consisted of a little fish and the wing of a 
fowl. He drank nothing but water. 

" He usually wore a long gray or dark colored 
greatcoat, a round hat, pantaloons, and gaiters, as 
represented in the full-length portrait executed some 
years ago by M. Scheffer, and which resembles him in 
every respect. He was remarkably clean and neat in 
his person, even to minuteness ; and for this reason his 
valet de chambre Bastien, who had long been in his 
service, and never quitted him, became at last indis- 
pensable for his comfort. Bastien — Sebastien Wag- 
ner — then 50 years of age, was a quiet, sober, honest 
and sensible man. He was formerly in the service 
of General Carbonel." 

Here we have excellent particularity — item upon 
item — and, when M. Cloquet, who is Boswellian in his 
minutiae, goes with us back to the museum at the 
chateau, especially the American part, we are treated to 

464 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

details ad infinitum — captured cannon, swords of 
honor/° paintings of scenes in which La Fayette par- 
ticipated, David's bust of Washington, portraits of the 
Presidents down to Jackson, the flag of the frigate 
Brandyzmne by which our hero returned to France, 
freedom flags from many lands, medals, souvenirs, sil- 
houettes, and the what-not of a celebrity popular in two 
worlds. We are not to forget that Beranger called him 
*^ Uhomme des deux mondes/' If we should be dis- 
posed to forget it no doubt La Fayette's white cockatoo, 
reposing on his perch, would remind us of it. " This 
fine bird," says M. Cloquet, " which was presented to 
La Fayette in 1829 by Benjamin Constant, always wel- 
comes the General, whom he seemed perfectly to dis- 
tinguish from the other inmates of the chateau, testi- 
fying the utmost joy at his approach, and lavishing 
on him the most aflPectionate caresses, whenever he 
stopped near his perch." 

Probably also some admirer gave La Fayette a 
bird of freedom ; at any rate, he built an aviary for his 
feathered gifts and a menagerie for the four-footed 
ones. Governor Clarke sent him a gray bear all the 
way from Missouri. Certainly La Fayette could have 
set up a cane emporium, in the event of further bank- 
ruptcy. There were canes with all sorts of heads, all 
sorts of stories attached. Canes, civic crowns, crystal 
boxes — these were numerous; but, most prized of all 
the souvenirs, were those associated with General 
Washington : a ring with his chestnut hair, and his 
wife's white hair; his glasses; his long ivory-handled 
sunshade, used in his horseback journey through the 

^"The most prized object in La Fayette's collection at La- 
grange was the sword of honor voted him by the Congress of 
the United States, and handed him at Havre by Benjamin 
Franklin's grandson. Franklin's letter to La Fayette with 
reference to the sword was kept as a treasure also. On the 
knob of the sword was La Fayette's motto ''Cur non?" 

30 465 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Carolinas. La Fayette's life was one of great length. 
When measured by what he did, extraordinarily long; 
and his accumulated relics represented many activities, 
many public services, many friendships. 

The Paris home of La Fayette at this time was 
No. 6 Rue d'Anjou. A young American (George 
Washington Greene) thus tells of his visit there: ^^ 

*' It was nearly eleven when I reached the Rue 
d'Anjou and began for the first time to mount the 
broad stairway of a Parisian palace. The General's 
apartments were on the entresol, with a separate stair- 
case from the first landing of the principal one, for 
his lameness made it difficult for him to go upstairs, 
and the entresol, a half-story between the ground floor 
and the first story, when, as was the case here, high 
enough in the ceiling, is one of the freest and pleasant- 
est parts of a French house. His apartments com- 
prised five rooms on a line — an antechamber, a dining- 
room, two parlors and a bedroom, with windows on the 
street — and the same number of smaller rooms on a 
parallel line, with their windows on the courtyard, 
which served for his secretary and servants. The fur- 
niture throughout was neat and plain ; the usual com- 
fortable arm-chairs and sofas, the indispensable clock 
and mirror over the mantel-piece, and in each fire-place 
a cheerful wood-fire." 

As for La Fayette's appearance: 

" I found that Ary Schefifer's portrait had not 
deceived me. Features, expression, carriage, all were 
just as it had taught me to expect them." 

The wife of General Winfield Scott (Miss Maria, 
daughter of Colonel John Mayo, of Richmond, Va., 
" Madame la Gene rale ") visited Paris about this time. 
She wrote to the wife of Samuel L. Gouverneur (Presi- 
dent Monroe's grandson) as follows : 

" I have been introduced to the good and brave La 
Fayette and family. On Wednesday he came with 
his son to see us. The print seen of this distinguished 

"- The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1861, vol. viii, No. i. 
466 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

patriot is a correct likeness, and his manners are as 
benevolent as his countenance. He has a soiree every 
Tuesday night. . . . The gallant old General 
resides in the rue d'Anjou, where he has a suite of small 
neat apartments, illuminated for the reception of guests 
every Tuesday evening. We made our debut there 
at 9 o'clock and found them crowded. Among the 
throng were many celebrated personages, for the 
enlightened of all nations seem ever ready to do homage 
to the virtuous patriot of Lagrange. 

'* At his soirees the greatest ease prevails. The 
refreshments are simple and plentiful ; and in compli- 
ment to the Americans and English, tea is always 
served — a custom not practised among the French. 
We again saw Sir Charles and Lady Morgan, and Mrs. 
Opie. the English authoress. 

** Then there was the orator, Benjamin Constant, 
a pale thin man, with light-blue eyes and snowy hair, 
looking as if he were far on the passage to the next 
world. M. de Marbois, who wrote the history of 
Louisiana, and Count Philip de Segur, considered the 
ablest military historian of the age, were also guests." 

When in September, 1833, James Buchanan,^^ after- 
wards President, then on a mission to Russia, was ill 
in Paris, " La Fayette called and sat nearly an hour " 
with him. Buchanan writes (in his Diary) : 

" Judging from what I have heard from the General, 
Major Poussin and others, I have no doubt the Repub- 
lican party are making rapid advances in France. This 
is not confined to the lower orders, but extends to the 
highest circles. . . . Political virtue, with the 
exception of La Fayette, and a few others, don't exist 
among them. The policy of the latter [La Fayette] is 

"In a speech in the United States Senate (February i 
and 2, 1836) on our "Relations with France," Buchanan called 
attention to the fact that we refused to urge our claims 
against France because of "our grateful remembrance of the 
days of other years." The testimony of La Fayette conclusively 
establishes this fact. In the Chamber of Deputies, on the 13th 
of June, 1833, he declared that we had refused to unite with 
the enemies of France in urging our claims in 1814 and 1815, 
and that if we had done so those claims would have been 
settled. This circumstance will constitute one of the bright- 
est pages of our history. 

467 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

that France shall now school herself, preparatory to 
republican institutions, for fifteen or twenty years. 
But I think he is afraid the change will take place 
sooner. He has lost much of his popularity in France 
because they believe him to be an imbecile, and because 
he will not lead the Republican party to immediate 
action. He has lost all confidence in Louis Philippe, 
who, in my opinion, is as desirous of being a legiti- 
mate as the Emperor Alexander. In case of general 
republican commotions in France a continental war 
becomes inevitable." 

" Imbecile " or no, it is clear that La Fayette's 
judgment was sound. There was a prescience amount- 
ing to downright wisdom in it. Later, Buchanan being 
at dinner with Count Pozzo di Borgo, Russian Ambas- 
sador at Paris, that old, and sophisticated, not to say 
wily, diplomat, assumed that his guest had introduced 
La Fayette's name (which Buchanan had not) and 
began to talk of him. 

" He said that the General had lost his influence 
with Louis Philippe, and in a great degree with France. 
I observed that whatever opinion others might express 
concerning him, I considered it the duty of every Amer- 
ican to speak with gratitude of him. Mr. Harris 
[Leavitt Harris, then United States charge d'affaires] 
here shook his head at me, but I continued to talk 
about him and the donation we had made him. The 
Count said it was all spent, and I replied I was very- 
sorry for it." ^^ 

Let it not be thought that politics, government 
affairs, or matters relating to human liberty occupied 
all of La Fayette's time while he was in Paris. He 
did other things.^* He was a model deputy — rarely 

""The Works of James Buchanan," by John Bassett 
Moore, vol. ii, p. 391. 

"La Fayette delivered the funeral oration at the grave 
of Benjamin Constant, who died December 8, 1830. " There 
were eight or nine processions at a time crossing the Tuileries 
Gardens, headed by tri-colofed flags with his name and 
'Liberie et Droit' written upon them." — "Mme. de Stael and 
Her Lovers," by Frances Gribbell. 

468 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

absent, always attentive. He was a member of many 
associations and was much sought after by those who 
needed the weight of his name in carrying through 
some scheme for the public benefit. Hardly a day 
was without visitors of consequence.^^ He was for- 
tunate in his secretary, M. Berger, of whom he was 
fond. " He often dined en famille, and almost every 
Sunday, with M. Destutt Tracy, the father of Mme. 
George La Fayette. He loved as his own his old friend's 
children, his daughter-in-law, M. and Mme. Victor de 
Tracy, and M. and Mme. de Laubespin, who were all 
worthy of his entire affection." The young people 
at No. 6 Rue d'Anjou knew how to be happy. There 
was music, there was dancing and there were merry 
times generally. La Fayette himself went to bed at 
ten o'clock. He never missed a Fourth, of July dinner, 
nor did he fail to read the American news. He was 
in great distress because of Jackson's quarrel with 
Congress. He gave a soiree every Tuesday, when his 
house was thronged with distinguished guests. 

And now occurred a grave, a tragic event involv- 
ing both La Fayette and his son George. It was not 
their affair, yet it affected them most distressingly. 

Two members of the Chamber, M. Dulong, deputy 
from the Department of the Eure, and General Bugeaud 
quarrelled. M. Cloquet says that on the 28th of Jan- 
uary, 1834, at ten o'clock at night, pressure was brought 
to bear upon him by a friend, whose importunities he 
could not resist, to attend M. Dulong, as surgeon, on 
the following forenoon in the Bois de Boulogne, where 
a duel with pistols was to be fought. He was most 
unhappy. So seemed his whole company when, at 
nine, he and Dr. Girou got into a carriage with M. 

"Several of these, notably among Americans J. Feni- 
more Cooper, published their impressions of their visits to 
La Fayette's Paris house. 

469 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

Dulong and his colleagues, MM. George La Fayette 
and Caesar Bacot. Let us continue the tale in Cloquet's 
own words : 

" We proceeded first to M. Dulong's hotel in the 
rue de Castiglione, to fetch his pistols, and thence we 
directed our course towards the Bois de Boulogne. I 
was but slightly acquainted with M. Dulong, for I had 
seen him only three or four times at La Fayette's house, 
or that of M. Dupont (de I'Eure), whom I had attended 
in my medical capacity. ... I confess a sort of 
evil presentiment. . . . M. Dulong was calm, but 
not free from concern. He had arranged his affairs. 
. . . We reached the Bois de Boulogne, by the gate 
called Porte Maillot, and proceeded thence towards the 
Rand Point du Cedre, the place appointed for the 
rendezvous. The carriage stopped; it had been fol- 
lowed by another, from which alighted General 
Bugeaud, his two seconds, Messrs. De Rumigni and 
Lamy, and the surgeon-major of a regiment in garri- 
son at Paris. Eleven o'clock struck ; the sky was over- 
cast and sombre, the weather cold and the north wind, 
which blew with violence, seemed to have benumbed 
all parties. Though the salutations exchanged on both 
sides were polite, but few words passed; and soon 
afterward the antagonists and their seconds struck into 
a narrow alley, to fix upon a suitable spot. After eight 
or ten minutes' walk, they followed a little sloping 
path to the left, which gradually lost itself in the copse. 
This path was selected as the scene of the engagement. 

" The opponents entertained no violent hostility 
against each other; the seconds seemed by no means 
disposed to make them fight; and yet, by a singular 
fatality, no proposal was, to my knowledge, made to 
accommodate matters. The combat was not intended 
to be deadly, and the seconds appeared to hope that the 
point of honor would be satisfied without accident. 

" It was agreed that the antagonists should be placed 
at the distance of forty paces from each other; and, 
the ground having been measured, a cane on one side 
and an umbrella on the other, were stuck in the ground, 
on the edge of the path to mark the space within which 
they were not allowed to approach. Each was to make 

470 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

use of the arms which he had brought with him, and 
which were loaded by the seconds. General Bugeaud 
had the higher ground, and M. Dulong the lower, and, 
at a given signal, these gentlemen were to advance upon 
one another, and lire as they pleased, but neither was 
to approach nearer than twenty paces to his opponent. 

" As soon as the signal was given, the combatants 
raised their weapons and advanced slowly towards each 
other. M. Dulong had made two steps, and General 
Bugeaud three, when the latter fired. A slight report 
was heard, and we perceived that M. Dulong was hit. 
I saw him stagger and fall to the ground. We imme- 
diately ran up to him to offer him our assistance, but, 
alas, he was mortally wounded. The border of his 
hat was cut by the ball, and his pistol which was still 
charged had fallen from his hand, and lay on the ground 
beside him. From a large opening on the left side 
of his forehead issued a stream of blood and portions 
of the brain ; the sight was horrible. . . . General 
Bugeaud approached within a short distance of him, 
and seemed moved and unhappy. . . . We took 
him to a small public house ... to his chamber 
. . . he died at five o'clock on the following 
morning. 

" During the entire period of his suffering, General 
La Fayette had frequently visited him. M. George La 
Fayette and Dr. Girou had not quitted him once." 

La Fayette felt a double friendship for the dead 
duellist. He had been his own close friend and 
George's, too. And, as the friendship, so was the 
shock a double shock. Moreover, M. Dulong had 
stood in the Chamber of Deputies on La Fayette's 
liberal ground. How could he do homage to the poor 
fellow's memory ? 

The veteran rem.embers his own hardships. When 
his soul is stirred, his grief profound, he bethinks him 
how most truly, most honorably he may do his duty. 
As occasion arises he deems it obligatory upon him to 
set an example of hardihood and self-sacrifice. It is 
his habit to say ** I will " — he has the obligation to say 

471 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

it. So now La Fayette felt that he must impose upon 
himself the obligation of a veteran — he must walk to 
Pere la Chaise. It was foolhardy to do so, but he 
did it. He followed the funeral on foot, from the Rue 
de Castiglione to the cemetery. 

" He with great difficulty supported so long a 
walk of several hours," says Dr. Cloquet ; " and, on 
returning home, felt himself excessively fatigued and 
ill, and was attacked with a complete suppression of 
urine. As I was absent from Paris on that day (Feb- 
ruary 2) I was unable to see him before the next morn- 
ing, but two skilful surgeons, who had been called in 
during the night, had made several fruitless attempts 
to relieve him. Having had him placed in a bath, I 
was more successful ; and accomplished the desired 
object, though with difficulty. He supported a painful 
operation with great courage and resignation, but the 
organ affected having been struck with paralysis, he 
was kept in bed, and subjected to the usual treatment 
in such cases. *' From that period I visited him regu- 
larly every day, with my medical brethren, Doctors 
Guersent, sen, Nicholas and Giron de Buzareingues." 

La Fayette slowly improved. ..." The organ 
affected recovered a portion of its power of contrac- 
tion. . . . He was still tormented by slight fits of 
flying gout, which successively attacked the joints of 
the lower limbs, the bronchia, the digestive organs and 
the eyelids." But he got back to his desk and to some 
of his lighter duties. He was eager to be out; yet 
knew that he must obey orders. His house was 
besieged by his friends. Few were admitted. Princess 
Christine de Belgiojoso (her maiden name was Tri- 
vulzi) waited on him assiduously. He had "adopted 
her among the number of his children." M. Cloquet 
says : " I often found this excellent lady by his bedside ; 
her information, no less solid than varied, and the 

472 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

charms of her conversation, beguiled his fatigues, and 
made him at times forgetful of his sufferings. La 
Fayette often spoke to me of this lady's rare merit, of 
her nobleness of character, and of her benevolence 
towards her unfortunate compatriots." 

Soon La Fayette had so far recovered as to be able 
to take the air in his carriage. *' His appetite improved, 
his strength increased, he recovered his gayety ; and the 
affected organ resumed some degree of energy. Every 
morning he took a drive to Beausejour, a country house 
at the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne. He passed 
the greater part of the day there, with his grand- 
daughter, Madame Adolphe Perrier, who had retired 
there to take care of one of her children." He read 
the journals; talked of the affairs of France; dis- 
cussed his friends' affairs much more than his own. 
Frequently he " spoke of America which he regarded 
as his second country — the country of his affections." 
He was ordered to take a few spoonfuls of Madeira 
wine. " Above all," said he to Bastien, " give me 
that from Lagrange ; it will do me more good." 
The Madeira at Lagrange had come in the form 
of gifts from dear friends and old comrades in 
the United States. 

" On the 9th of May," continues M. Cloquet, " the 
sky, which in the morning had been clear and serene, 
was in a few hours afterwards covered with thick 
clouds. The wind became high, the temperature of the 
air suddenly lowered, a thunderstorm came on, and the 
rain fell in torrents. La Fayette, who had gone out 
to make his habitual excursions to Beausejour, had not 
taken sufficient precaution to secure himself against 
the sudden change in the atmosphere ; he was exposed 
for some minutes to a cold northwest wind, and was, 
moreover, wet by the rain. On his return he was ill 
and oppressed, and felt acute pain in his limbs. During 

473 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

my first visit the following morning he was seized 
with a general shivering, which, in half an hour after- 
ward, was followed by a violent feverish reaction. 
From that period the fits were renewed in irregular 
and quick succession ; and besides the patient's situation 
was aggravated by coma, and other nervous symptoms. 
For some days, a painful swelling was manifested near 
the organ originally affected." La Fayette was 
patience itself. He suffered with smiles. Bastien, 
worn with constant watching, sometimes fell asleep in 
the room; and, though his services were needed, La 
Fayette would not permit him to be av/akened. Our 
good Boswellian doctor adds : 

" One morning, on my arrival. La Fayette regarded 
me with a smile, and giving me his hand exclaimed : 
' The Swiss Gazette has just killed me, and yet you 
know nothing of the matter ! Nay, more — that I 

might die in due form, the celebrated Doctor , 

whom I hardly know, has been consulted.' He then 
handed me the paper, which contained the false state- 
ment, adding : * After that, believe the public journals 
if you can ! ' 

" During his malady. La Fayette was very fond 
of a small white bitch, which he had received, I believe, 
from Madame de Bourck, and which never quitted him. 
The animal permitted nobody except Bastien to 
approach her master's clothes when he was in bed, 
expressed joy or sorrow according as he felt better 
or worse, and might have served as a thermometer to 
indicate the state of his health. She followed Bastien 
to Lagrange." 

When La Fayette was told by his doctors that they 
had decided to consult other physicians, he asked : '* To 
what purpose?" "We think," replied M. Guersent, 
" that we have done what is best in your case, but were 
there only a simple remedy that might escape us, it is 
our duty to seek it. We wish to restore you as soon 
as possible to health, for we are responsible for your 

474 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

situation towards your family, your friends and the 
French nation of whom you are the father." *' Yes, 
their father," said La Fayette, with a smile, " on con- 
dition that they never follow a syllable of my advice ! " 

Such was La Fayette's last summing up of his lack 
of grand achievemient in his own country during a 
devoted life. He was on his deathbed. His main 
achievement, as he well knew, was in America. But 
reviewing upon his pillow, solemnly, the work done 
for liberty in France he must have felt that his people 
were moving away from darkness and towards the 
light. Perverse, indeed, they were — hard to persuade, 
hard to lead and hard to hold when finally induced to 
follow; but there had been a great betterment of the 
masses in his time and much of the improvement is to 
be credited to him. 

Professors Fouquier, Marjolln and Andral con- 
sulted with La Fayette's attending physicians. La Fay- 
ette found old friends among them; he greeted them 
heartily, but he knew that they could not help him. 
At times he became melancholy, but for the most part 
was resigned. " Life," said he, " is like the flame of a 
lamp; when the oil is out the light is extinguished 
and all is over." " Out, out brief candle ! " was Shake- 
speare's way of expressing it. 

MM. Girou and Cloquet were with their patient 
almost constantly. *' On the 20th of May," says the 
latter, " about one o'clock in the morning, the gravity 
of the symptoms increased. Respiration, which for 
the last eight-and-forty hours had been much impeded, 
became still more difficult, and the danger of suffo- 
cation was more imminent. Drowsiness, delirium and 
prostration of strength became more decidedly pro- 
nounced ; and at twenty minutes past four o'clock in the 
morning, La Fayette expired in our arms. A few min- 
utes before he breathed his last. La Fayette opened his 

475 



THE TRUE LA FAYETTE 

eyes, and fixed them with a look of affection upon his 
children, who surrounded his bed, as if to bless them, 
and bid them an eternal adieu. He pressed my hand 
convulsively, experienced a slight degree of contrac- 
tion in the forehead and eyebrows, and drew in a deep 
and lengthened breath, which was immediately followed 
by a last sigh. His pulse ceased to beat. His end 
was that of a good man, who abandons the world with- 
out fear or remorse — that of the wise man mentioned 
by La Fontaine: 

" Approche-t-il du hut? quitte-t-il ce sejour 
Rien ne trouble sa fin; c'est le soir d'ttn beau jour."'^^ 
M. David took a plaster cast of the features. Ary 
Scheflfer made a painting of them. Madame de Mau- 
bourg (Anastasie) knelt by the bed and sketched them 
most lovingly. M. Cloquet also used his pencil in order 
to preserve the death-scene. As for Bastien, he was 
seized with the idea of burning around La Fayette's 
remains some of those wax-candles left by Lord Corn- 
wallis at his headquarters at Yorktown and subse- 
quently sent all the way oversea to Lagrange. 

La Fayette's death was noted with sorrow through- 
out the world. John Quincy Adams, in Congress, gave 
eloquent voice to America's grief and gratitude. House 
and Senate went into mourning and recommended the 
people to do likewise. President Jackson ordered the 
army and navy to give La Fayette all the honors paid 
to Washington. 

In Paris the funeral was one of the great events 
of the year. An immense throng filled the streets. 
Tri-color standards adorned each corner of the bier, 

" The eulogy appears in a volume entitled : " Oration on 
the Life and Character of Gilbert Motier de La Fayette, de- 
livered at the request of both houses of the Congress of the 
United States, before them in the House of Representatives 
at Washington, on the 31st of December, 1834, by John Quincy 
Adams, a member of the House." 

476 




TOMB OF LAFAYETTE, IN PICPUS CEMETERY, PARIS 

From a drawing by M. Jules Cloquet, M.D., and reproduced in his 
"Souvenirs sur la vie privee dti General La Fayette." The enclosure as shown 
here is oblong, with walls and three entrances. It contains two rows of mau- 
soleums belonging to the families De Noailles, De Grammont, De Montaigu, 
and others of distinguished name. The two rows of tombs are separated by 
a gravel path, at the extremity of which is a stone cross. At the southeast 
angle of the ground is the LaFayette plot. General LaFayette's grave is 
fenced off with an iron railing. It is topped by two large black marble 
slabs, slightly inclined. Mme. de LaFayette's grave is side by side with 
her husband's. 



LA FAYETTE'S LAST DAYS 

following which was Bastien bearing his General's 
sword and epaulets. Soldiers formed a double line on 
each side of the cortege. The procession moved from 
the Rue d'Anjou to the Church of the Assumption, 
where La Fayette's old soldiers, who filled the porch, 
seized the coffin and bore it into the sanctuary. From 
the church the procession crossed the city by the interior 
boulevards to the cemetery of Picpus, where La Fayette 
was buried by the side of Madame de La Fayette, then 
twenty-five years in her grave. According to the 
" Memoirs of Bertrand Barere," vol. iv, p. 236, La 
Fayette had caused to be shipped to France a ton of the 
soil of Bunker Hill to cover his coffin. He felt that he 
belonged to America ; and now all Americans ^^ feel 
that they owe unending homage to him. 

"Hence General Pershing's Picpus pilgrimage, upon the 
arrival of the American vanguard at Paris; hence, also, Presi- 
dent Wilson's dutiful and patriotic obeisance when, on June 7, 
1919, in the final scene of the World War, he placed on the 
tomb a bronze wreath inscribed : " To the Great La Fayette, 
from a Fellow Servant of Liberty." 



INDEX 



Abbaye, the (prison), 170, 272, 

^7Z, 334, 335, 344- 
Acton, Lord, quoted, 276, 277, 

279, 281, 283. 
Adams, John, 91, 93, 117, 127, 

220, 239, 240, 421, 427. 
Adams, John Quincy, 432, 476. 
Aguesseau, Chancellor d', 42. 
Aiguillon, due d', 276. 
Alger, J. G., quoted, 253, 311, 

406. 
Allen, G. N., quoted, 171, 172. 
Alliance, the (frigate), 169- 

173, 175, 215. 
Anderson, F. M. (cited), 312. 
Andre, Major John, 137, 181- 

184. 
Andre, M. (Constitutional- 
ist), 311. 
Anglas, Boisy d', 384. 
Anne of Austria, Queen, 23, 

24. 
Arbuthnot, Admiral, 179, 189, 

194. 

Archenholz, M., 361-363. 
Argenson, Marquis d', 237. 
Armand, Colonel (Marquis 

de la Rouerie), 104, 123, 

212. 
Armstrong, General John, 104. 
Arnold, Benedict, 134; 179- 

184; 191, 192, 195, 198, 206. 
Arnold, Mrs. Margaret, 181, 

183. 184. 
Artois, Comte d', 39, 241, 243, 

261, 263, 267, 311, 3.19, 416; 

as Charles X, 47, 420, 437- 

449- 
Assembly : 

Constituent, 252. 

Legislative, 316, 336. 

National, 243, 261. 26q, 271, 
297, 298, 299, 316. 
Aulard, A., quoted, 257, 300, 

317. 
Averhould, Colonel d', 354. 
Avery, Elroy M., quoted, 127. 



Ayen, due d', Marechal de 
Noailles (La Fayette's 
father-in-law), 41, 42, 43, 
AA, 45, 47, 66, 70, jt^, 74, 78, 
162, 173, 347. 

Ayen, duchesse d' (La Fay- 
ette's mother-in-law), 42, 
45, 46, 49, 54, 216, 346-352, 
386. 

Bailly, President, 252, 256, 
257, 264, 265, 266, 269, 270, 
271, 272, 2^2^, 277, 282, 283, 
300, 301, 311, 316, 326, 2>y7, 
342. 

Balch, Thomas, cited, 62, 124, 
130, 194- 

Bancroft, Dr. Edward, 69, 176. 

Bancroft, Historian, 57, 147. 

Banklay, Comte de, yz- 

Barber, Lieutenant - Colonel, 
Francis, 202. 

Barere, 253, 325, 335, 338, 477. 

Barnave, 299, 309, 316, 317, 
318. 

Barras, Admiral, 47, 203, 205, 
208. 

Barren Hill, Affair of, 136- 
142. 

Barry, Mme. du, 2>7, 39, 41, 42, 

-^zz, 342. 

Bascot, Caesar, 470, 471. 
Bassano, Duke of, 415. 
"Bastien" (see Wagner). 
Bastille, 240, 261, 263, 264, 274, 

291. 
" Battle of the Canes," 293, 

294. 
Bax, E. B., cited, 297. 
Beauchet, M., 378. 
Beaumarchais, Caron de, 56, 

58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 130, 

^Z2, ZZo- 
Bedaulx, Captain de, 79, 82. 
Belgiojoso, Princess de, 472. 
Belloc, Hilaire, 233, 234, 299, 

300, 322, Z27-ZZT^, 336, 355, 

357, 35S. 



479 



INDEX 



Benton, Thomas, 423. 
Berger, M., 469. 
Berry, due de, 417- 
Berthier, intendant, 264, 271- 

273- 
Bethlehem, Pa., La Fayette at, 

1 1 5-120. 
Bicetre, prison, 202. 
Billaud-Varennes, 335. 
Blanc, Louis, quoted, 227, 231, 

233, 236, 238, 239, 262, 346. 
Bland, Theodoric, Col., 105, 
Boeckles, the (Bethlehem), 

117, 119, 120. 
Boigne, Comtesse de, 218, 219. 
Boissier, Gaston, cited, 26. 
Bollman, Dr. Erick, 364-374. 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 404, 4o6, 

412. 
Bonaparte, Lucien, 414, 415. 
Bonaparte, N. (see Napo- 
leon). 
Bonneville, M., 258. 
Bordeaux, La Fayette at, ^(y- 

78. 
Borgo, Count Pozzodi, 468. 
Bouille, Marquis de, 118, 302, 

305, 307, 314, 316. 
Boyce, Edmund, quoted, 412. 
Brandywine, Battle of, 102- 

114. 
Breteuil, Baron de, 260, 358. 
Breze, Marquis de, 256. 
Brienne, Comte Lomenie de, 

244, 245. 
Brioude, town of, 17, 19, 20, 

28, 375, 378, 380, 381. 
Brissot, M., 2i1^' 
Broglie, Achille Charles 

Leonce Victor, due de, 418, 

445, 455-458. 
Broglie, Charles, Comte de, 

30, 50, 52, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63, 

65, 66, 74. 
Broglie, Victor Frangois, 

Marechal, 57. 
Brown, James, 422. 
Brunswick, Duke of, 323, 333, 

353. 
Buchanan, James, 467, 468. 
Bugeaud, General, 469-471. 
Buol, Baron de, 390. 
Burgoyne, General Sir John, 

214. 



Butler, Lieutenant - Colonel, 
Richard, 124, 152, 201, 208. 

Buysson, Chevalier du, 79, 
88-90. 

Byron, Admiral, 166. 

Caesar, Julius, in La Fayette's 

land, 14. 
Cadmus, packet, 423, 425. 
Cadwalader, General John, 

133, 147. 
Cahiers, 248. 
Calhoun, John C, 431. 
Calonne, 238, 239, 241, 242, 

244, 246, 319. 
Campbell, Wm. J., 455. 
Campo, Formio, Treaty of, 

389, 391, 407. 
Canada, La Fayette and, 131- 

135, 167, 175, 179, 220. 
Carbonel, General, 462, 464. 
Carman, Chevalier de, 222. 
Carlisle, Frederick, Earl of, 

165-167. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 30, 174, 227, 

247, 281-283. 
Carmichael, Charge d'Af- 

f aires, 221. 
Carnot, 346. 

Carrichon, Abbe, 347-352, 408. 
Carter, Prof., 397, 398. 
Castries, M. de, 224. 
Cayenne experiment, 224, 225. 
Chabannes, M. de, 219. 
Chambord, Comte de 

(" Henry V"), 418, 446, 448. 
Chapelier, M., 311. 
Charles, Prince of Lorraine, 

356, 357. 
Charles V, 228, 234. 
Charles X. (See Comte d^Ar- 

tois.) 
Charleston, S. C, described, 

86. 
Chasteler, Marquis de, 356, 

357, 389. 

Chastellux, Marquis de, 184, 
185, 203, 210, 212. 

Chateaubriand, 15. 

Chaumont, Leray de, 395. 

Chavaniac, La Fayette's birth- 
place, 13, 19, 20 ; description 
of, 27, 28, 33, 37, 50, 317, 
391, 392. 



480 



INDEX 



Cliavaniac, Mile, de., cousin, 

32. 
Chavaniac, Mme. de, aunt, 29, 

32, 375, 379, 380, 381, 407. 
Cheney, "Squire," 109, no. 
Chesterfield, Lord, 233. 
Chevert, General, 30, 31. 
Chimay, Prince de, 30. 
Choiseul, due de, 37, 57, 58. 
Choisy, M. de., 210. 
Church, Ella Rodman, cited, 

424. 
Clairfait, General, 355. 
Clay, Henry, 421, 432. 
Clergy, the, 64, 228, 229. 
Clermont-Ferrand, 14, I7-I9- 
Clinton, Governor George, 

141. 
Clinton, Sir Henry, 69, 137, 

138, 141-143, 148, 157, 161, 

166, 179, 184, 186, 188, 189, 

191, 200, 203, 205, 206, 214, 

215. 
Qouquet, M. Jules, 27, 393, 

397, 458-465, 469-476. 
Cluny, M. de, 237. 
Cochran, Dr. John, 169. 
Colbert, Jean Baptiste, 230. 
Collot, d'Herbois, 335, 343. 
Conciergerie, prison, 334, 348, 

383. 
Condes, the, 267, 301, 306. 
Condorcet, 225, 337. 
Congress, Continental, 64, 90, 

92, 93, 96, 114, 115, 127, 130, 

145, 167. 168, 176, 179, 223; 

United States, 397, 422. 
Conner, H. W., 433. 
Constant, Benjamin, 465, 468. 
Constitutionalists, the French, 

257, 258, 266, 311, 322, 328, 

412 
Contis, the, 267. 
Convention, the, 336, 341. 
Conway, General (and Cabal), 

129, 130-133, 135, 144. 
Cooch's Bridge, fight at, 100. 
Corday, Charlotte, 341. 
Cordeliers, the, 295, 299, 300,' 

301. 
Cordier, Abbe, 269. 
Cornwallis, Lord, 105-11S, 

121, 123-125, 151, 153, 155, 
48 



156, 18S-203, 205, 206, 213, 

215, 216, 219, 404. 
Costello, Louisa Stuart, cited, 

14. 
Coudray. General du, 64, 65, 

91,92. 
Crawford, M. MacDermot, 

quoted, 27, 41, 48, 217, 224, 

347, 349, 375-380, 382, 386, 

408, 409. 
Cropper, Colonel John, 113, 

114. 
Cumberland, Duke of, 30, 31. 

Damas, M. de, 180. 

Danton, 25^, 294-296, 301, 309, 

311, 313, -333-335, 337-341. 
David, M., 476. 
Deane, Silas, 58, 60-62, 65, 67, 

68, 77, 91, 92. 
Debry, Jean, 326. 
Declaration of Rights, 251, 

285, 409. 
Delaware College, 6, loi. 
Delaware, operations in, loi, 

102. 
Desmoulins, Camille, 34, 262, 

263, 268, 297, 300, 301, 309, 

341- 
Des Touches Chevalier, 192, 

195. 
Deux-Ponts, Colonel Guil- 

laume de, 206, 212. 
Dillon, General, 323, 326, 332. 
Directory, the, 336, 391, 397. 
Doniol, Henri, 20, 27, 28, 30, 

50, 57, 65, 75, 157, 175, 178. 
Donop, Count, 122. 
Dossonville, 343-346. 
Drayton, A. O., 427. 
Droit de chasse, 13, 235. 
Drouet, J. B., 306. 
Dubois-Martin, 66, 67, 79. 
Dulong, M., 469-471. 
Dumas, Count Mathieu, 180. 

185. 
Dumoriez, General, 323, 326, 

327, 338, 339, 353. 
Dupont (de I'Eure), M., 470. 
Duras, duchesse de, 383, 384. 
Dury, Victor, 14, 15, 230, 232- 

234, 248. 
Dyson, John, 377. 



INDEX 



Edwards, Mrs., 391. 
Eglantine, Febre d', 341, 343- 
Elizabeth, Mme., 38, 58, 302, 

303, 30s, 318. 
Espinasse, a home of the La 

Fayettes, 25. 
Espremenil, Counsellor, 224, 

Estaing, Comte d', 17 (New- 
port episode), 157-168, 220, 
221. 

Estrees, due d', 29, 30. 

Ettwein, John, 116. 

Far j on. Abbe, 224. 

Favras, Marquis de (plot of), 

300. 
Fayon, Abbe, 34, 35, 37- 
Federation, Feast of, 290-292. 
Fenelon, 230. 
Fcrmiers generaux, 236. 
Fersen, Count Axel, 180, 301- 

306. 
Fete de Vetre Supreme, 342, 

383. 
Fisher, Sydney George, 

quoted, 147, I50, 158, 187, 

188. 
Fiske, John, quoted, 189. 
Fitzpatrick, Richard, 137, 263, 

387, 392, 406, 455. 
Focault, M., 290. 
Forez (mediaeval home of La 

Fayettes), 19, 22. 
Foulon, Minister, 264, 271-273. 
Fouquier-Tinville, 324, 341. 
Fox, Charles James, 190, 263, 

387, 392, 397, 398, 406, 454. 

455. 
Francis II, 219. 
Franklin, B., 34, 60-63, 74, ^, 

114, 167, 173-175, 219, 220, 

374- . 
Frederick the Great, 225, 226. 
Freer, Martha Walker, quoted, 

189. 
French Alliance, 94, 136, 138. 
Fresnes, M. de, 216. 
Frestel, M., 375, 377, 378, 382, 

384. 
Frestnel, Leon, 462, 463. 

Gahelle, the, 235. 
Galloway, Joseph, 116. 



Gates, Horatio, General, 130- 

133, 144, 146, 187, 189, 190, 

214. 
Gaudet, M., 321, 322. 
Gaulot, Paul, cited, 307. 
Genlis, Mme., 446. 
George III, 50-52, 69, 186, 216. 
Gerard de Rayneval, 157, 176. 
Germain, Lord George, 30, 97. 
Germantown, battle of, 119, 

125, 142. 
Gimat, Major De, 79, iii, 112, 

119, 142, 166, 193, 211. 
Girondins, the, 316, 318, 337- 

341, 3^3- 
Girou, Dr., 469, 471, 475. 
Gissauguer, M., 382, 383. 
Gloucester, Duke of, 51-53- 
Gloucester, N. J., affair at, 

123-125, 139. 
Gloucester, Va., 210. 
Glover, General John, 159. 
Goldring, Douglas, cited, 15. 
Gontaut, Mme. de, 437. 
Gouverneur, S. L., 466. 
Gouvion, M. de, 193, 292, 301, 

302. 
Grammonts, the, 42, 346, 384. 
Grant, General (British), 138, 

140, 142. 
Grasse, Comte de, 188, 203- 

209, 215. 
Graves, Admiral, 179, 208, 214. 
Green Spring, affair of, 201, 

202. 
Greene, Colonel Christopher, 

122, 123. 
Greene, F. V., cited, loi. 
Greene, General N., 104, 105, 

121-123, 147, 155, 160, 185, 

190-202, 433. 
Greene, Geo. Washington, 

cited, 466. 
Gregoire, Abbe, 225, 254. 
Grellet, M., 347, 349- 
Grey, General Charles, 138, 

387. 
Gribbel, F., cited, 468. 
Griffith, T. W., quoted, 319, 

324, 325- 

Hamilton, Alexander, Colonel, 
104, 137, 147, 154, 158, 159, 
199, 211, 213, 392. 



4S2 



INDEX 



Hancock, John, 117, 163, 179 
Hand, General, 180. 
Harmar, Colonel, 222. 
Harnoncourt, Comte d', 356 
Harris, Leavitt, 468. 
Harrison, Benj., 98. 
Hartford Conference, 180-182 
Hastenback, battle of, 30. 
Hatch, L. C, quoted, i68._ 
Haussonville, Comte de, cited, 

25. 
Hautefort, Mile, de, 23, 24. 
Hazlewood, Commodore, 122. 
Headlam, Cecil, cited, 228, 

230, 301. 
Heath, General Wm., 179, 206. 
Henin, Princess d', 361, 369. 
Henry HI, 233. 
Henry, Patrick, 223, 321. 
Hermione, frigate, 178. 
Hoche, General, 259, 287. 
Hood, Admiral, 208, 214. 
Howard, John Eager, 196. 
Howe, Admiral Lord, 98, 122, 

138, 157-159, 162. 
Howe, General Robert, 87. 
Howe, General Sir William, 

96, 98, 99, 114, 116, 136-138, 

147. 
Huger, Benj., 83-86, 374. 
Huger, F. K., 85, 369-374, 433- 

Jacobins, the, 295, 299, 300, 
313, 320-322, 339, 341. 

Jay, John, 220, 221, 240. 

Jemmapes, battle of, 327. 

Jenkins, Howard M., quoted, 
102. 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 69, 145, 
452. 

Johnston, R. M., quoted, 273. 

Jones, Captain John Paul, 173- 

175. 
Jordan, John W., quoted, 107. 
Joubert, Captain, 222. 
Jusserand, J. J., quoted, 212, 

213. 

Kalb, Baron de, 56, 58, 60, 63- 
67, 70, 73-78, 83, 86, 87, 89, 
92, 187, 433. 

Kapp, Frederick, 56, 64, 73, 74, 
76, S7. 



Klopstock, 379. 

Kloster-Zeven, 31. 

"Knights of the Poinard," 

294. 
Knox, General, 92, 155. 
Knyphausen, 104, 105, 142, 151, 

152. 
Korff, Baroness de, 304, 305. 

La Bruyere, Jean de, 48, 234. 

Lacoste, M., 379. 

La Fayette family (ancestral 
dates), 20, et seq. 

La Fayette, Mme. de (Ad- 
rienne d'Ayen), wife of 
General La Fayette, 41-45, 
54, 71, 72, 81, 86, 94, 170, 
216, 221-224, 269, 314, 317, 
346; trials of at Chavaniac, 
374-383; in Paris, 383-385; 
at Olmutz, 385-392, 408; 
death of, 409, 410. 

La Fayette, Anastasie de 
(Mme. Latour-Maubourg) . 
daughter of General La 
Fayette, 119, 173, 381, 384, 
3S6. 

La Fayette, Edmond, grand- 
son of General La Fayette, 
463. 

La Fayette, George Wash- 
ington de, son, 216, 269, 374, 
375, 377, 378, 382, 384, 392, 
406, 407, 409, 419, 423, 432. 
434, 453, 470, 471- 

La Fayette, Gilbert Motier. 
Marquis de (invoked by 
General Pershing, 7, 8) ; 
birth of, 13; as boy and 
youth, 16, 32-36; at court, 
37-41 ; marriage, 41-44 ; and 
his mother-in-law, 43-49 ; 
his American inspiration, 
so; American preparations, 
54, et seq; description of, 
80; sails with Kalb, 81; at 
Charleston, S. C, 87; goes 
to Philadelphia, 88-92; and 
Congress, 93; meets Wash- 
ington, 94; at Brandy wine 
battle, 102-114; at Valley 
Forge (Conway Cabal and 
Canada project), 129-135; 
Barren Hill reconnaissance, 



483 



INDEX 



136-142 ; Monmouth, 142- 
156; Newport, R. I., 156- 
164; Carlisle affair, 165- 
167; illness, 168; his return 
to France (and mutiny of 
Alliance crew), 169-173; 
receives Congress sword, 
177; expedition of French 
allies, 178-180; Arnold's 
treason, 181-184; to the 
Chesapeake, 186-195 ; and 
Virginia, 19^215 ; back m 
France, 216-221 ; and Spain, 
221 ; and Nantucket fisher- 
ies, 221 ; visits America (in 
1784) , 222-224 ; and Cayenne 
experiment, 224, 225; visits 
Frederick the Great, 225 ; at 
the beginning of the French 
Revolution, 239; Vice- 
President of Assembly, 264 ; 
chosen Commandant in 
Paris, 269; Foulon-Berthier 
episode, 271-274; to Ver- 
sailles, 281-289; Federation 
Feast, 290-292; and Ro- 
tondo, 292; and the Court, 
294; and royal flight, 301- 
309; and critics, 310-316; 
retires, 317; named for 
Mayor of Paris, 318; com- 
mands frontier army, 320; 
before Assembly, 322 ; quits 
France, 327; H. Belloc on, 
327-331 ; Aulard on, 331, 
332; writes to his wife, 356; 
scorns Austrian and Prus- 
sian bribes, 357; in Wesel 
dungeon, 358; in Magdeburg 
dungeon, 360-364 ; in Neisse 
dungeon, 366; in Olmutz 
dungeon, 366-390; thrilling 
attempt to escape, 369-372; 
refuge in Holstein and Hol- 
land, 391, 392; and debts to 
Gouverneur Morris, 394- 
396; and Directory, 397; 
and Napoleon, 399-415 ; and 
Louis XVIII, 415-420; in 
retirement at Lagrange, 
417; tries to overthrow 
Bourbons, 417-420 ; visits 
America again (1824-25), 



421-436; in the Revolution 
of 1830, 43^451; at La- 
grange, 452-466; in Paris, 
466-469 ; interest in Dulong- 
Bugeaud duel, 469-472 ; ill- 
ness and death, 472-477. 

La Fayette, Henriette de, 
daughter, 72, 119, 173. 

La Fayette, Jacques Roch 
Motier de, uncle, 29, 

La Fayette, John Frangois 
Motier, Comte de, 25. 

L^ Fayette (Julie de la Ri- 
viere), mother of La Fay- 
ette, Comtesse de, 21, 27, 

33> 34. 
La Fayette, Louise Angelique 
Motier de (court celebrity), 

23-25. 

La Fayette, Marguerite Made- 
laine de, aunt, 32. 

La Fayette, Marie Antoinette 
Virginie de, daughter. (See 
Mme. Lasteyrie.) 

La Fayette, Marie Madeleine 
Motier (Pioche de la 
Vergne), Comtesse de, the 
novelist, 25, 26. 

La Fayette, Michel Louis, 
Colonel, the Marquis de, 
father of General La Fay- 
ette, 20, 21, 23, 27; contro- 
versy on death of, 29^-31; 
52. 

La Fayette, Oscar, grandson, 

453. 
Laffitte, M., 442-447. 
La Force, the prison, 334, 335, 

383. 
Lagrange, home of La Fay- 
ette, 42, 397, 398, 406, 407; 

description of and life at, 

452-466. 
Lally Tollendal, 257, 264-266, 

296. 
Lamarque, 451. 
Lamartine, 319, 383, 445- 
Lamballe, Princess de, 293, 

335. 
Lameths, the, 299, 316, 354, 

358, 366; Comte de, 212. 
La Motte, Mme., 239. 
Lamouy, Colonel de, 123. 
Landais, Captain, 16^173. 



484 



INDEX 



Lane, William Carr, 434. 
Lanjuinais, J. D., 412. 
La Nymphe, frigate, 223. 
La Rochefoucauld, Frangois, 

due de, 26. 
Lasteyrie, Marquis Louis de, 

406, 409. 
Lasteyrie, Mme. de (Virginia 
de La Fayette), 119, 217, 
314. 317, 384, 386, 392, 407, 
462. 
Latimer, cited, 304, 349, 373. 
La Touche, Captain, 178. 
Latour Maubourg, Comte 
Charles de, son-in-law of 
La Fayette, 392. 
Latour Maubourg, Marie Vic- 
tor Nicolas, Colonel de, 
with La Fayette at Olmutz, 
318, 327, 354, 358, 362, 366, 
386, 387, 391, 399. 
Latrobe, 379. 
Latude, 263, 374- 
Laubespins, the, 469. 
Laun, Henri van, cited, 418. 
Launay, de, 263. 
Laurens, Colonel John, 154, 
156, 158, 159, 162, 185, 187, 
188, 211. 
Laurens, Henry, 115. 
Lauzun, Armand Louis, due 
de (General Biron), 194, 
207, 214, 302. 
Lavoisier, 34. 
La Victoire, (&, 76, yB), 79, 81- 

88. 
Le Boursier, 68, 81-88. 
Lee, Arthur, 60--62, 173. 
Lee, Charles, General, 91, 92, 
130, 131; in Monmouth 
Campaign, 143-156. 
Lee, " Light-horse Harry," 

103. 
Lee, Richard Henry, 60. 
Legendre, 384. 
Lenotre, M., quoted, 292, 293, 

306, 309, 343-346. 
Leopold H, 318, 319. 
Lescaliers, M. de, 224. 
Leslie, General A., 191. 
Levasseur, Auguste, 213, 423, 

424, 427, 430, 443. 
Levering, J. M., quoted, 117. 



Lincoln, Benj., General, 134, 

210, 213. 
Lisle, Rouget de, 320. 
Lit de Justice, 256. 
Livingston, Robt. R., 219. 
Lodge, Henry Cabot, quoted, 

126, 127. 
Loiseau, quoted, 221. 
Lomenie, Louis de, 59. 
Longwy, fall of, 2/27, 333. 
Los Pasajes, La Fayette at, 

7^, 77; sails from for 

America, 81. 
Lossing, 8s, 118. 
Louis XIII, 241. 
Louis XIV, 24, 229, 230, 233, 

235, 236, 259, 289. 

Louis XV, 37, 38, 41, 48, 57, 

58, 232, 233, 236. 
Louis XVI, as Dauphin, 39, 

42 ; as King, 41, 47, 69, 233, 

236, 240, 241, 242, 244, 245, 
252, 253, 256, 259-261, 263- 
266, 269, 279 ; at Paris, 281- 
289 ; flight to Varennes, 301- 
309, 311, 319, 320, 322-324, 
336, 337; death of, 338. 

Louis XVIII. (See Comte de 

Provence.) 
Louis Philippe, 437, 446, 450, 

463. 
Lovell, James, 93, 130. 
Liickner, General, 320, 322, 

326, 353. 
Lusighem-Lezay, 22, 34. 
Luzerne, Chevalier de, 176, 

182, 205. 

Maclay, E. S., quoted, 171. 
McLane, Captain Allen, 136, 

439. 
Madison, James, 223, 432. 
Magaw, Surgeon, 113. 
Magdeburg, prison, 360, 361, 

363, 365, 379. 
Maillaird, Stanislas, 281, 344. 
Maistre, Joseph de, 55. 
Maiden, M. de, 304. 
Malesherbes, 225, 236, 2>Z7y 

zz^, 342. 

Mallet du Pan, 311, 313, 336. 
Malouet, 253, 274. 
Malseigne, 315. 
Mapeon, 233. 



485 



INDEX 



Marat, 253, 266, 275, 289, 296, 

297, 333, 335, 341. 
Marboeuf, Alexis, 397. 
Marceau, General, 259. 
Marck, Comtesse de la, 216. 
Maria Theresa, empress, 280, 

307. , , . 

Marie Antoinette, dauphiness, 
36, 40; queen, 20, 41, 47, 
173, 217, 236-239, 242, 245, 
259, 261, 280, 287-289, 293, 
300; flight, 301-309, 320, 
^2-},, 337 ; death of, 342, 354, 
416, 438. 

Marie Leszczynski, queen, 30. 

Marion, General Francis, 83. 

Marmont, General, 438, 44i. 
442. 

Marshall, John, 121, 144. 

Marthory, M., 379- 

Martignac, M. de, 438. 

Masclet, Joseph, 392, 393. 

Massey, William, quoted, 145. 

Maudat, M., 324, 353. 

Mauduit, Duplessis. (See 
Plessis.) 

Maurepas, Comte de, 66, 67, 
118, 174, 178, 214, 236, 237, 
245. 

Mauroy, Vicomte de, 76, ^T, 

79. 

Maxwell, General, 104, I43. 

149, 150. 
Mazarin, Cardinal, 20, 229, 

259. 

Metternich, 445. 

Miall, Bernard, quoted, 257. 

Michelet, 227, 229, 231, 235, 
251, 252, 260, 262, 270, 285, 
287, 288, 295, 297, 299, 308, 
313-315. 

Mifflin, Thomas, 130, 133. 

Mignet, 227. 

Minden, battles of, 29, 30. 

Minton, Lord, quoted, 255. 

Mirabeau, 47, 225, 242, 245, 
247, 251-254, 260, 261, 275, 
247, 251-254, 260, 261, 275, 

298, 300, 301, 312, 319. 
Mistral, 16. 

Moncktouy Lieutenant - Colo- 
nel, Henry, 155. 

Monmouth, battle of, 69, 142 
IS6. 



Monroe, James, 384, 388, 421- 

423, 431, 432, 466. 
Montagnards, the, 301. 
Montagu, Mme. de, 385, 393, 

394. 408. 
Montesquieu, 232. 
Moore, John Bassett, cited, 

468. 
Morgan, Dan, General, 121, 

150-152, 190. 
Morgan, Lady, 19, 41, 225, 

230, 254, 337, 397, 415, 452. 

453, 458. 
Morris Gouverneur, 250, 269, 

270, 274, 275, 380, 382, 383, 

388-390, 394, 395, 396. 
Mouchy, Mme. ("Mme. Eti- 
quette"), 40, 43, 280, 383. 
Moultrie, General, 87. 
Mounier, 277, 278, 284, 285, 

296. 
Mountflorence, Major, 324. 
Moustier, M. de, 303, 304. 
Mun, Marquis de, 397. 

Nancy, 314, 3i5, T^^^l' 
Napoleon Bonaparte, 79, 228, 

324, 389, 391, 397; and La 

Fayette, 399-407, 411-415, 

420, 440. 
Narbonne, Comte de, 365. 
National Guard, 269, 270, 277, 

281, et seq; 312, 313, 3.15, 328, 

374, 438, 443, 444, 447. 
Necker, 238, 242, 244, 245, 247- 

249, 251, 255, 261, 275, 277, 

390, 300. 
Necklace, the diamond, 239, 

300. 
Ney, Marshal, 332, 416. 
Nicoullaud, M. Charles, 218. 
Noailles family, the, 41, 44, 47. 

75, 383- 
Noailles, Louis, Vicomte de, 

43, 54, 66, 275, 276, 30;^- 
Noailles, Louise, Vicomtesse 

de, 42-44, 216, 34^352. 
Noailles, Marechale de, 346- 

352. 
Nobles, the, 64, 216, 228, 229, 

234, 235, 249. 
Noblesse de robe, 234. 
Notables, the, 241-243, 246, 

247, 327. 



486 



INDEX 



O'Hara, General, 213. 
Olmutz, 79, 85, 346, 366-390. 
Olney, Colonel Stephen, 211. 
Orleans, due de (Egalite). 

250, 259, 261, 288, 290, 292, 

342. 
Ormesson, 238. 
Orvilliers, Comte d', 177. 

Paine, Thos., 114. 

Palais, Royal, 259, 260-262, 

265, 267, 273, 2']'], 278, 322. 
Parish, John, 385, 388, 395- 
Parliaments, French, 232, 22,Z^ 

237, 244. 
Pasquier, due de, 244. 
Paulettc, the, 234. 
Peace Commissioners, British, 

165. 
Pennypacker, S. M., 129. 
Pershing, General, 7, 477. 
Peters, Judge Richard, 127, 

156, 430. 
Petion, 318, 31Q, 324. 365. 
Phillips, General William, 29, 

31, 194, 197, 198. 
Phipson, T. L., Dr., 334, 348. 
Picpus Cemetery, 7, 408, 477. 
Pigot, General Robert, 159. 
Pinckney, C. C, 433. 
Pinckney, Thomas, 388, 433. 
Pitt, William (Lord 

Chatham), 319. 
Plessis, College du, ^3, 34, 46. 
Plessis-Mauduit, Chevalier du, 

123, 124, 171. 
Poix, Prince de, 43, 50, 69. 
Polignac, Jules de, 438, 439, 

445, 450. 
Polignacs, the, 19, 22, 47, 267. 
Pompadour, Mme. de, 233. 
Pontgibaud, Chevalier de, 

quoted, 169-171, 212. 
Poor, General Enoch, 136, 140, 

180. 
Portail, General du, 207. 
Portraits of La Fayette, 455- 

457. 
Potter, General James, 136, 

139. 
Prescott, General, 145. 
Procter, Colonel Thomas, 104, 

137. 



Provence, Comte de, 47, 48, 
219, 302; as King Louis 
XVIII, 412, 416, 420, 440. 

Pulaski, 104, 118, 433. 

Pusy, Bureaux de, 354-356, 
358, 366, 386, 387, 391. 

Puy, M., 375. 

Raimondis, Captain, 169, 170. 

Rambaud, cited, 228. 

Ravenel. Mrs. St. Julien, cited, 
84. 433. 

Rawdon, Lord, 69, 190. 

Raynal, Abbe, 119. 

Rea, Lillian, cited, 25. 

Red Bank, battle of, 122, 123. 

Reed, Joseph, 130. 

Republicans, French, 257, 331, 
332. 

Revolution, French, 226-352; 
(of 1830), 439-451- 

Reynaud, Solon, 381, 382. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, 231, 259. 

Richeprey, M. de, 224, 225. 

Riviere, Comte de La, 34, 35. 

Riviere, Marquis de La, grand- 
father of La Fayette, 27, 35. 

Robespierre, 34, 41, 253, 275, 
296-299, 321, 322, 324, 325, 
338, 340, 341, 382, 383. 

Robinet, Dr., cited, 334. 

Rochambeau, Comte de, 178- 
181, 184-186, 192, 193 ; York- 
town, 203-315. 

Rochambeau, Vicomte de, 180. 

Rodney, Admiral, 208. 

Roederer, 323. 

Rohan, Cardinal de, 20, 239. 

Rolands, the, 337-340, 375» 378. 

Romeuf, M. de, 307, 309, 389. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 486. 

Rosenthal, Louis, quoted, 54, 
72. 

Ross, Colonel John, 105, no. 

Rotondo, 292, 293. 

Roumainville, Joseph, 16. 

Rousseau, 232, 455. 

Royal, Madame, 302, 305, 318. 

Saint-Amand, Imbert de, 279, 
286, 302, 303, 308, 324, 418, 
437 



487 



INDEX 



Sainte-Beuve, 26, 55, 23S, 262. 
Saint-Germain, Comte de, 63, 

236. 
Saint-Huruge, Marquis de, 

277- 
Saint-Simon, Marquis de, 205, 

207, 208. 
Salaberry, President, 343. 
Sansterre, 69. 
Sapal, Balthasar, 304, 305. 
Saratoga, battle of, 120, 121. 
Sauce, Mayor, 307. 
Sauterau, Dr., 462, 463. 
Saxe-Teschen, Duke of, 357- 
Say, M. Horace, 433. 
Scammell, Colonel Alex, 210. 
Schefifer, Ary, 455. 
Schouler, James, cited, 421. 
Schuyler, General Philip, 134. 
Scott, Mrs. Winfield, 466. 
Scott, General Charles, 149, 

150, 152, 154. 
Segur, Comte de, 33, 45, 46, 

54, 55, 232, 406, 467. 
September Massacres, 334, 

335. 
Seven Years' War (French 

and Indian), 29, 57. 
Sevigne, Mme. de, 26, 299. 
Sieyes, Abbe, 245, 247, 251, 

252, 264, 265, 277, 278, 299, 

312, 393, 397, 399. 
Short, Wm., 388. 
Simcoe, Colonel John G., 136, 

140, 152, 191, 197, 201. 
Simione, Mme. de, 218. 
Sloane, W. M., quoted, 403. 
Smith, Adam, 237. 
Smollet, Tobias, 31. 
Sparks, Jared, 50, 52, 54, S6, 

68, 85, 95, 175, 388. 
Spears, J. R., cited, 201. 
Stael, Mme. de, 260, 285, 301, 

311, 392, 456, 468. 
St. Clair, General, 222. 
St. Just, 342, 343. 
Stephens, General Adam, 125. 
Stephens, H. M., cited, 325. 
Stephens, W. W., cited, 237. 
Steuben, Baron, 92, 134, 135, 

156, 191, 193, 197, 210. 
Stevens, B. F., quoted, 189. 
Stevens, John A., quoted, 211, 
222. 



Stille, Dr. C. J., 57, 59, 62, 63. 
Stirling, General William, 147, 

155. 
Stormont, Lord, 61, 65, 67, 74. 
Sullivan, General John, at 

Brandywine, 102-111; at 

Newport, 159-163. 

Taine, 59, 229, 246, 268, 272, 

274. 
Talleyrand, 245, 291, 311, 365, 

403. 
Target, M., 278. 
Tarleton, Colonel Banstre, 

137, 187, 190, 200, 202, 387. 
Ternay, Chevalier de, 179, 

180, 192, 203. 
Terreur Blanche, 417. 
Terror, the, 274, 322, 325 et 

seq., 342, 343, 404. 
Tesse, Comtesse de, yz, 3^5, 

391, 392. 
Thiebault, Baron, 264, 265, 

267, 283, 284, 291, 294, 320, 

322, 324, 353- 
Thiers, L. Adolphe, 441, 446, 

450. 
Third Estate, 228, 247, 249, 

252, 256, 257. 
Thugut, Baron de, 388, 389. 
Ticknor, George, 456. 
Tilghman, Colonel Tench, 

132, 154. 
Tilley, M. de, 192. 
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 227, 

234. 
Tompkins, Vice - President, 

424. 
Tonnerre, Clermont, 265. 
Torneau, M., 265. 
Tourzel, Mme., 303, 305. 
Tower, Charlemagne, Jr., 20, 

27, 28, 32, 34, 45, 50, 53, 65, 

75, 7^, 79, 118, 138, 141, 147, 

157, 161, 162, 174-176, 178, 

180, 192-194, 202, 204, 208. 
Townsend, Isaiah, 458. 
Townsend, Joseph, 107-T09. 
Tracy, Mile, de (Mme. 

Georges de Lafayette), 407, 

462. 
Tracys, the, 469. 



INDEX 



Trevelyan, go, 91, 97, 106, 129, 
133-135, 149, 150, 165. 

Tuckerman, Bayard, 220, 243, 
244, 374, 391, 394, 403, 416, 
419, 420, 440. 

Turgot, 64, 236-238, 248, 250. 

Turnbull, D., 438, 445, 448. 

Valley Forge, 69, 126-142, 145, 

146, 153, 33^. 
Valmy, battle of, 327, 335. 
Valory, M. de, 301, 304, 305, 

306. 
Van Tyne, C. H., quoted, 164. 
Varniim, General, 122, 128, 

159. 
Vaudeuils, the, 267. 
Vaux, Comte de, 177. 
Vercingetorix, 14, 35. 
Vergennes, Comte de, 61, 64, 

73, 74, 174, 175, 178, 206, 214, 

220, 221, 236, 241. 
Verginaud, 311, 313. 
Villele, M. de, 438. 
Viomenil, the brothers, 210; 

(Baron), 211. 
Visecq-Latude, M., 325. 
Voltaire, 232, 233. 
Vose, Colonel, 202. 

Wagner, Sebastien (" Bas- 
tien"), 420, 464, 474, 476. 

Waldo, Dr. Albigence, 128. 

Wain, Robt., Jr., 80, 351, 407. 

Walpole, Horace, 51, 174, 225, 
292, 300. 

Washington, General George, 
52, 63, 92, 94-98; Brandy- 
wine, 104-114, 116, 118; 



Conway cabal, 125-135 ; 
Barren Hill, 136-142; and 
Charles Lee (Monmouth), 
143-156, 177-179; and Ar- 
nold's treason, 181-184, 201 ; 
and Rochambeau (York- 
town), 203-215, 221-223, 
225, 239, 248, 274, 300, 362, 
377-379, 387, 388, 395, 398, 
407, 410, 431, 435. 

Watson, Thomas E., quoted, 
47, 235, 236, 239, 253, 259. 

Wayne, General, 104-110, 125, 
127, 128, 141, 147, 149, 150, 
152, 153, 155, 156, 198-203, 
205, 207, 222. 

Wesel, prison, 359, 360. 

Wethersfield, Conn,, Confer- 
ence, 203. 

White, historian, 332. 

Whitemarsh, 121, 126, 137. 

Wilkinson, General James, 
132, 133- 

Willert, P. F., quoted, 300. 

Williams, Helen Maria, 406, 
413. 

Williams, Otho, General, 196, 
316. 

Willson, Beckles, quoted, 51. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 477. 

Wraxall, Sir N. W., quoted, 
214. 

Yorktown, 205-216, 223. 
Young, Arthur, 260. 



Zinzendorf, Count, 116. 



